Crichton Carbon Centre's
Peatland Connections
Peat and Peatlands
PEAT
Peat is a type of soil. It’s a dark brown, squadgy, organic matter formed by sphagnum mosses and bog flora dying back and partly decaying in anaerobic conditions. Peat forms at approximately 1mm a year as the vegetation dies back - year on year - creating layers known as stratification. When peat reaches a 50cm depth, and deeper, it’s classed as Deep Peat. Deep Peat takes around 500 years to form.
PEATLANDS (also called mires and bogs).
A peatland is a landscape where soil, weather, water, and living organisms interact and work together to create a niche ecosystem. The diversity of life on a peatland is supported by peat and water. Peatlands have a high-level water content; the ground is saturated and the high water tables can give rise to pool systems across a healthy peatland. This hydrological system is critical for peat forming plants like sphagnum mosses to grow and thrive. This layer of vegetation protects the peat beneath, keeping the ground wet, holding the peat in place, and protecting it from rain, wind, and ice erosion.
The plants that grow on peatlands - sphagnum mosses, cotton grasses, sundews, bog asphodel, and bog cranberry - form a low-lying carpet of vegetation. This interwoven living carpet of plants, some of which can only be found on peatlands, absorbs carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, which then becomes locked as carbon into their cell structures. As the plants die back the carbon they have sequestered is secured in the 1mm layer of peat they form. As well as forming peat, a peatland’s plant life supports insects that live off and among the plants and the spiders, amphibians, reptiles, birds and small mammals that feed upon these insects. Peatlands are distinctive and dynamic landscapes supporting remarkable and unique wildlife. If you view a peatland from ground level, with your eyes and ears down low among the vegetation, an awesome world is revealed.
Quick Peaty Points
In the UK, there are three broad peatland types: blanket bogs, raised peatlands. and fens.
Peatlands cover just 3% of the world’s land surface and they store more carbon than all the woodland and forests in the world.
In the UK it is estimated the carbon stored in healthy peatlands is the equivalent to all the carbon stored in forests in the UK, Germany and France, combined (Moors for the Future, 2019).
60% of the UK’s peatlands are in Scotland
80% of the UK's peatlands have been modified as a result of past and present management.
Bare and eroding peat releases CO2 back into the atmosphere.
Through Peatland ACTION degraded and eroding peatlands across Scotland are being restored.
At the time of Peatland Connections, Crichton Carbon Centre was best known for its peatland restoration work and training.