A technical report of the Knowledge Centre on Earth Observation
Despite covering only 2% of EU land surface, peatlands store approximately 30% of EU terrestrial carbon1, making their monitoring critical for achieving climate neutrality by 2050. While drained peatlands emit significant greenhouse gases (+25-40 tCO2eq/ha/yr), restored peatlands can sequester carbon (-2.5 tCO2/ha/yr), yet six overlapping EU policy frameworks—the Carbon Removal Certification Framework, Common Agricultural Policy, Nature Restoration Regulation, Habitats Directive, Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) Regulation, and Soil Monitoring Directive—currently impose fragmented monitoring requirements with conflicting definitions, reporting cycles, and spatial scales. This study establishes a comprehensive interoperability framework combining Earth Observation technologies, ecosystem modelling, and in-situ measurements to demonstrate that integrated monitoring systems can efficiently serve multiple policy requirements simultaneously through a "collect once, use many times" approach, potentially achieving substantial efficiency gains compared to maintaining separate policy-specific systems. Our systematic analysis reveals that the primary barriers to integration are not technical limitations but rather policy-level coordination challenges around semantic harmonization (e.g., soil organic carbon reported as concentration g/kg versus stock tC/ha) and temporal alignment of reporting cycles (ranging from monthly to six-year periods). By transforming peatland monitoring from fragmented, policy-specific systems toward integrated, interoperable infrastructure, this framework enables policymakers to reduce administrative burden, enhance data consistency across regulations, and support evidence-based ecosystem management across the EU's climate, nature, and land-use policy landscape.
VANCUTSEM Christelle;
LAHSAINI Meriam;
STRONA Giovanni;
LAZARO Cristina;
NOCITA Marco;
DOWELL Mark;
MARIN FERRER Montserrat;
2026-04-22
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC146158
978-92-68-39794-7 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 40677,
OP KJ-01-26-199-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC146158,
10.2760/7888836 (online),
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