The crackling does not bode well. It rustles and cracks with every step, and the floor under the rubber boots should actually be smacking loudly. The water in the Süskenbrocksmoor has not been high enough for that for a long time: around thirty drainage ditches crisscross the area near Borkenberge in the southwest of the Münsterland and channel the water out of the moor. "Today we're doing dry runs here," says Matthias Olthoff from the Coesfeld nature conservation center with a view of the parched main ditch. A video recorded in March 2019 that Olthoff plays on his smartphone shows how quickly this can direct the water out of the moor. After persistent rainfall, the ditch, which was about half a meter wide and deep, was filled to the brim, and water rushed through the channel at high speed.Everything was over in just a few days.

Rebecca Hahn

Freelance writer in the science of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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The Süskenbrocksmoor is not the only one in Germany from which the water has been deliberately dug.

In the 19th century, people began to drain bog areas in order to make them usable for agriculture and forestry.

Of the former 1.5 million hectares of German moorland, perhaps five percent are still intact today.

However, drained bogs release enormous amounts of greenhouse gases.

If the Federal Republic wants to become climate-neutral by 2045, as provided for in the Climate Protection Act, there is no way around returning all bogs to their wet state.

Wet peatland is usually so saturated with water that dead plants are well preserved in it. Their remains, which have not been decomposed or are barely decomposed, form thick peat coverings, layer by layer, which are largely made up of carbon. In the course of millennia, moors have been transformed into gigantic deposits in this way: They only make up three percent of the global land area, but store twice as much carbon as all forests on earth combined, although their area is ten times as large. If water is withdrawn from bogs, however, they develop into real climate drivers.

If the peat is dry and therefore exposed to the air, decomposition processes begin which produce large amounts of carbon dioxide: around the world, peatlands release around two gigatons of CO₂ every year;

Greenhouse gases from drained peatlands contribute seven percent to Germany's emissions.

Many of the old moors can no longer be recognized as such because they are hidden under fields, grassland or forest.

Once a military training area, today a natural heritage

In Süskenbrocksmoor it was not so much agricultural interests that determined the use. Until a few years ago, there was a military training area on the site since 1873, which was last used by the British military. The area was kept dry so that the soldiers could march on a meadow without sinking into the mud. Since the withdrawal of the British armed forces, nature conservation has prevailed here, in 2016 the federal government transferred the 1770 hectares of the Borkenberge military training area to DBU Naturerbe GmbH, a subsidiary of the German Federal Environment Foundation. Their employees and their colleagues at the Coesfeld Nature Conservation Center are trying to get the water back into the moor - and keep it there.

In the past few days, a farmer has poured tons of clay onto a lush green area in front of the moor. Two or three ocher-colored piles are now next to each channel to be sealed: "We use this to seal the trenches," explains Alexander Breitkopf from the Nature Conservation Center. If water later accumulates on the meadow, several small bodies of water are created in the sections. Breitkopf first digs deep with a small excavator until he encounters mineral soil. This is the only way to ensure that the clay plugs really seal the gutters and that water does not seep underneath. The master gardener then shovels the clay into the holes, on top of which he places previously cut slabs with mossy vegetation. To press a seal, he drives the excavator over it a few times: “In a few weeks it will be closed again.“Then nothing more can be seen of the dredging work.