Why does peat form

Like all wetlands, bogs are inhabited by marshy plants, including trees, grasses, and moss. The bog's acidity prevents this vegetation from fully decay ing. This partly-decayed organic material builds up in bogs.

Over millions of years, it becomes peat. Peat is thick, muddy, and, when harvested, looks like dark, earthen bricks. Traditional peat harvesting involves a farmer or laborer manually cutting thick strips of peat with a large, sharp hoe. Areas of harvested peatland s are called cutaway bog s for this reason. Today, industrial peat harvesting involves huge tractors that scrape peat from the surface of bogs. This scraped peat is then collected into bricks.

This is called milled peat. Wet bricks of raw peat are pressed to force out water. The bricks are then dried further, using heat or pressure.

The bricks are then used as fuel, mostly for heating homes and businesses. Northern Europe, particularly Scandinavia and the British Isles , have the most peatlands harvested for fuel use. However, peat bogs can be found from Tierra del Fuego to Indonesia. Finland, Ireland, and Scotland are the biggest consumers of peat as a fuel.

Peat is the first step in the formation of coal , and slowly becomes lignite after pressure and temperature increase as sediment is piled on top of the partially decaying organic matter. In order to be turned into coal, the peat must be buried from km deep by sediment. Even though Ireland is one of the countries that uses peat the most, you can see that it still makes up a very small amount of their primary energy use, especially in more recent years where alternatives are being used more widely.

Look at different years to see how this use has changed. Fossil Fuels. Nuclear Fuels. The hydrosere may be initiated in waters of any trophic status from oligotrophic to eutrophic followed by infilling of the water body by sediments of either external allochthonous or internal autochthonous origin. Hydroseral succession may also commence in response to excessively high rainfall on landscapes of mineral soil or rock.

The processes involved in hydroseral succession can be maintained under two distinctly different water supply regimes, namely, geogenous or ground water, which is enriched with dissolved nutrients and ombrogenous water from aerial precipitation.

The terms ombrotrophic and rheotrophic are used to differentiate between mires formed under the influence of either geogenous or topogenous waters.

It can take a year or so for peat to build up by just 1 millimetre. It takes far less time to deplete and destroy these rich natural habitats and carbon stores. Most peat sold to UK gardeners and growers comes from what are called raised peat bogs in low-lying areas, especially in the Republic of Ireland.

Here peat is harvested on an industrial scale to sell to the horticulture trade and as a fuel. Some peat about , tonnes a year is still produced in the UK. But, thanks to campaigning, the use of home-grown peat has declined. Peat use is still too high, though, and most demand is now being met by imports from Ireland. We don't have lush rainforests in the UK and Ireland. Peatlands are our rainforests. They are internationally significant nature hotspots and vast carbon cupboards.

And, like rainforests, we are busy destroying them. Not all peatlands are the same. Peat forms in blanket bogs, lowland raised bogs, lowland fens and upland flushes, mosses, swamps and fens — very different landscapes and locations but all requiring damp conditions. All peatlands are important natural habitats in their own right and for the other wild species they support such as: carnivorous sundew plants; and uncommon insects such large heath butterflies, four-spotted chaser dragonflies and picture-winged bog craneflies.

Peatlands are also a natural form of water purification and flood protection. Acting as a huge sponge, peatlands soak up and retain water in the landscape, holding back potentially dangerous flood waters. When peatlands do release water it is cleaner because peat acts as a filter. Water companies are realising they need peat to continue doing this to help them avoid having to clean and purify water so much before they supply it to us.

So they help in the fight against climate change. We need to do this as well as reforesting the UK and restoring the condition of our soils.

Heathrow Airport — which in got the go-ahead to build a third runway — is exploring paying to restore peatlands to offset the harm more flights and pollution will cause.

Peatlands should be restored in any case. The aviation industry should cut its own greenhouse gas emissions directly. Peat is a great preservative because the lack of oxygen in its waterlogged conditions slows the rate at which materials decay. For this reason, peatlands are a treasure trove for historic and scientific research, giving rich insights into our past.

Peatlands have preserved archaeological interests, such as Neolithic and Iron Age settlements and artefacts.