How peat could protect the planet

"Across the globe, drained peatlands are emitting billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. Scotland has emerged as a leader in efforts to restore bogs to health.

Scotland’s Flow Country is the world’s largest area of blanket bogs.

On a chilly September morning in Scotland’s northern highlands, a giant excavator rumbles back and forth across peatlands that stretch to the horizon. As the wind whips across the mossy terrain, the machine’s operator is undoing decades of damage by smoothing out the drainage ditches that scar the landscape.

The peat here can reach up to 10 metres deep and developed slowly over thousands of years. Then, in the middle of the twentieth century, Scotland embarked on an ill-fated effort to transform the bogs into tree farms. Landowners ploughed trenches to drain bogs and planted pine trees and spruce that often failed to thrive. As the ventures struggled, researchers and the Scottish government started to see the peatlands in a fresh light, recognizing that they lock up vast amounts of carbon. If they are not kept healthy, the bogs could release their stored carbon and accelerate global warming." ～Virginia Gewin @Nature
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Image by Sophia Hilmar from Pixabay
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