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Bundesamt für Naturschutz

Depressions on peat substrates of the Rhynchosporion

Stages of regenerating vegetation on cutover bogs or on damp sands with Rhynchosporion albae communities. Occurs naturally on frost-influenced damp sands and on shallow peats on the margins of oligotrophic or dystrophic standing waters.

The main distribution of this habitat type is e.g. on immature soils in areas of fluctuating water levels on the edges of oligotrophic and mesotrophic lakes, wet areas in heathlands, and in cutover areas of former raised bogs.

Natura 2000-Code
7150

Notes on habitat mapping

The criterion for the delimitation of this habitat type is the presence of vegetation of the syntaxa given above. The entire depression is to be included if it hosts the relevant vegetation at least in parts.

This type often occurs only in small patches. It is to be recorded and reported separately, except in cases of individual plants occurring in hollows of raised bog or transition mire complexes. This habitat type differs from natural dystrophic ponds and lakes (3160) in that the water depth is < 20 cm at least occasionally, or in that it is only intermittently wet.

Comments

The inclusion of this type in the Habitats Directive is problematic for two reasons:

1. Especially in England this type of vegetation is spreading on peatlands degraded by fire. Outside of peatland complexes the habitat type usually occurs on partly cut-over bogs or secondarily e.g. in sand extraction sites.

2. Naturally this type often occurs only in small patches, forming a mosaic with other communities, e.g. as part of a peatland complex recorded elsewhere.

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