# Fostering Peat Moss Feedbacks to Accelerate Peatland Restoration

## TL;DR

The paper explores how community-level traits in peatlands can create feedbacks that influence restoration success, focusing on peat moss and its role in maintaining ecosystem functions.

## Contribution

The study introduces a framework for understanding and fostering emergent feedbacks in peat moss-dominated systems to accelerate peatland restoration.

## Key findings

- Peat moss feedbacks can enhance water retention and reduce microbial decomposition of organic matter.
- Self-amplifying and self-dampening feedbacks influence key physical, chemical, and biological processes in peatlands.
- Fostering these feedbacks offers a promising approach for restoring degraded peatlands.

## Abstract

Extensive knowledge exists on plant‐species traits and functions, but we understand less about how population‐ or community‐level emergent traits influence ecosystem functioning. This knowledge gap is important for ecosystems like peatlands, arid drylands, salt marshes, seagrass meadows, and mangroves, where emergent traits of plant communities can create plant‐environment feedbacks that amplify or dampen ecosystem processes. Recent insights from restoration ecology suggest that these feedbacks can critically influence restoration success. Despite growing recognition of emergent trait‐driven feedbacks in other ecosystems, they remain underexplored in peatland restoration, the world's most carbon‐dense ecosystem. Here, we review emergent self‐amplifying and self‐dampening feedbacks with net positive effects for peat moss‐dominated systems. We show how these feedbacks can promote key physical, chemical, and biological processes that enhance peat moss growth, increase water retention, and reduce microbial decomposition of organic matter. Understanding and fostering these feedbacks offers a promising framework to accelerate peatland restoration across diverse degradation states.

Alternative stable states and peat moss and vascular plant feedbacks in peatlands. Selected feedbacks in a peat moss‐dominated state or a vascular plant‐dominated state. The two insets show ecosystem states (dot) in resilience landscapes (bottom). The plus symbol (+) indicates a self‐amplifying feedback, while a minus symbol (−) indicates a self‐dampening feedback.