How can Europe restore its wetlands in ways that deliver measurable climate benefits, protect biodiversity and make effective use of limited resources? The EU Horizon-funded WET HORIZONS project addressed this question at its final public session, “Policy-ready evidence and tools for Europe’s wetland restoration,” held on 25 August 2026 as a special session at the SERE Conference in Brest.
Bringing together leading European researchers, biogeochemical modellers and policy analysts, WET HORIZONS has worked to strengthen the scientific evidence and practical tools needed to support climate-smart, cost-effective and policy-relevant wetland restoration. The final session presented four key outputs designed to help decision-makers move from scientific evidence to restoration planning and implementation at regional, national and European levels.
From greenhouse-gas measurements to national climate reporting
The session opened with Dr Aram Kalhori in behalf of the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, who presented new Emission Factors for Restored Peatlands. Peatland rewetting is widely recognised as an important climate mitigation measure, but its greenhouse-gas impacts can vary substantially depending on local conditions and the time elapsed since restoration.
The WET HORIZONS approach addresses this variability by combining field measurements, meteorological observations, vegetation surveys, high-resolution satellite data, UAV imagery and machine learning. The resulting analysis identifies distinct emission phases following rewetting and accounts for peatland type, hydrology, climate zone and restoration age.
The resulting Tier 2 emission factors and water-table-depth response functions can improve national greenhouse-gas inventories and help bridge the gap between measurements at individual sites and assessments at catchment or national scale. Beyond climate reporting, the approach provides information relevant to peatland management, restoration planning and policy development, explained Kalhori.
A digital tool for planning peatland rewetting
The next presentation introduced ServiPeat, an online decision-support system developed to help land managers and restoration practitioners explore peatland rewetting scenarios.
Mateusz Grygoruk of the Centre for Climate Research at Warsaw University of Life Sciences-SGGW presented how ServiPeat combines the MODFLOW groundwater-flow model with empirical and physical algorithms tailored to peatland characteristics and user inputs.
The tool can estimate the number and height of ditch blocks required under different scenarios, the resulting rewetting extent and water-retention gains, as well as potential changes in CO₂ and CH₄ emissions. It also provides assessments of potential impacts on water quality and biodiversity and the economic value of ecosystem services.
Rather than replacing detailed engineering designs or field assessments, ServiPeat is intended as an early-stage planning and communication tool. By making different restoration scenarios and their potential trade-offs easier to explore, it can support discussions between land managers, practitioners and other stakeholders.
Identifying where peatland rewetting can deliver cost-effective climate benefits
The economic dimension of restoration was addressed by Daniel Urban from Scotland’s Rural College, who presented WET HORIZONS research on Quantifying cost-effective abatement potential for peatland rewetting.
Peatland rewetting can contribute simultaneously to climate and biodiversity objectives, but restoration interventions can involve substantial and highly variable costs. The researchers applied marginal abatement cost curves (MACCs) to two case-study regions to examine where greenhouse-gas reductions could be achieved most cost-effectively.
Their findings indicate substantial potential for cost-effective emission abatement in both regions. At the same time, Monte Carlo analysis highlighted considerable uncertainty around estimates of cost-effectiveness. This uncertainty reflects, among other factors, variation in emission factors, capital and opportunity costs, and the benefits associated with land uses following rewetting, including paludiculture.
The results point to the importance of improving knowledge about how restoration costs vary with degradation status, biogeography and land ownership, while continuing to refine emission factors. Such improvements can make economic assessments more robust and strengthen their value for restoration policy.
Making restoration priorities visible through “serious play”
The final presentation demonstrated an interactive approach to exploring the spatial trade-offs involved in wetland restoration. Alessandro Gimona of The James Hutton Institute introduced “Serious Play” in Peatland and Wetland Decisions, an open-access, multi-criteria decision-support tool.
The tool combines spatial datasets, indicators and future-projection model outputs, allowing users to investigate how different spatial priorities influence outcomes for greenhouse-gas mitigation, biodiversity and economic considerations under alternative future climate scenarios.
Users can work with European-scale datasets at 0.5° resolution or with higher-resolution, 100-metre datasets covering nine WET HORIZONS case-study areas. The tool can identify and prioritise areas with the highest scores according to selected criteria, with analysis results available for download as GeoTIFF raster files.
By turning complex datasets and competing objectives into an interactive decision-making environment, the tool is designed to support dialogue about where restoration may deliver the greatest combined benefits—and where trade-offs need to be considered.
Connecting WET HORIZONS with Europe’s wetland research community
The final session formed part of a wider day of exchange at the SERE Conference. During the internal WET HORIZONS final event in the morning of 25 August, representatives of the project’s sister projects also presented their latest results and project status.
Liisa Ukonmaanaho from LUKE represented ALFAwetlands, Ana Sousa from the University of Aveiro represented Restore4Cs, and Carlos Sánchez García from Idener represented REWET. Their contributions highlighted the close links between the European projects working to advance wetland restoration science, monitoring, climate mitigation and ecosystem resilience.
The WET HORIZONS project also brought its results directly to conference participants through an information booth in the entrance hall of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Brest, the venue for the event. Project fact sheets describing the newly developed tools, along with a project brochure, poster and postcards, attracted strong interest from people passing by and provided an opportunity for informal discussions about the project’s results and their practical applications.
From evidence to action
Together, the tools and findings presented in Brest demonstrate how wetland restoration decisions can be supported by increasingly integrated evidence—from greenhouse-gas dynamics and hydrology to biodiversity, ecosystem services, costs and future climate conditions.
As Europe seeks to accelerate wetland restoration while meeting ambitious climate and biodiversity objectives, WET HORIZONS provides approaches that aim to make restoration more measurable, more transparent and better aligned with the realities faced by decision-makers and practitioners.
The project’s final event marked the conclusion of WET HORIZONS as a research project, but its tools and evidence are intended to continue supporting the planning and evaluation of wetland restoration across Europe.