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Bogs trap carbon and keep it in place. That helps keep Earth’s temperatures steady. That’s why bogs are called carbon sinks. They store twice the carbon that’s held in forests. People in Ireland have always relied on bogs for survival. Wild berries and other plants can provide food. And peat cut into bricks to burn as fuel is still a ...
While wet and healthy, bogs trap carbon and keep it in place. That helps keep Earth’s temperatures steady. That’s why wetlands are called carbon sinks. Around the world, wetlands like bogs store twice the carbon that’s held in trees and forests. That’s incredible! Bogs are a traditional part of the Irish way of life. Throughout history ...
Feb 28, 2020 · Peatlands play a huge role as carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots. Centuries of depletion, either by drainage or peat extraction, have put them under huge risk. The damage can be reversed, as current projects demonstrate. We must regenerate damaged peatlands and save those that still exist today. Wetlands are known by many names such as ...
The End. 03/20/2020 00:00:00. "There's something magic about it," says Jim Murphy. I agree. Murphy lives in Ireland. He burns turf to heat his home.What’s turf? It’s a soil made up of dead plants. It is also called peat. In Ireland, peat comes from bogs. A bog is a wetland. It’s made from water and plants.Walking on a bog is like walking ...
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Bogs don’t conjure warm, fuzzy feelings for most people. The landscapes are often associated in popular culture with witches, Europe’s mummified “bog bodies” and dreary weather. It’s perhaps telling that “quagmire” — another word for a bog — is also used to refer to a sticky predicament. But to the scientists who study them, bogs are far from bleak...
With an increased awareness of the threats to bogs has come a greater push to identify and protect the resources contained in these ecosystems. Recently, large new peat-rich spots have been discovered around the world. In January 2017, British and Congolese scientists announced in Nature that huge tracts of peat have been hidingin a lush expanse of...
When dug up, peat is inherently flammable and is used in some places as a source of fuel. But in their natural, wet state, peatlands are resistant to fires. Even after months of drought, healthy peatlands stay moist. So scientists are trying to understand what factors change that dynamic — and what that means for fires and carbon storage. It can be...
Draining the land plus “slash and burn” techniques to clear areas for agriculture are the main reasons that tropical peatlands are catching fire, says Alexander Cobb, an environmental scientist at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. To make room for oil palm plantations and other crops, companies will raze existing trees (the so...
Peatlands in cold places face challenges in a changing climate, too. In northern latitudes, including the Arctic, peat has been entombed for centuries in permafrost. Arctic warming is now exposing that peat, raising the risk of once-uncommon fires. Last summer’s Greenland fire is one such example. When McCarty spotted what she thought was a fire, s...
Oct 3, 2024 · Ask the Chatbot a Question Ask the Chatbot a Question bog, type of wetland ecosystem characterized by wet, spongy, poorly drained peat-rich soil.Bogs can be divided into three types: (1) typical bogs of cool regions, dominated by the growth of bog mosses—sphagnums (mosses of the genus Sphagnum)—and heaths, particularly leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne); (2) pocosins, or evergreen shrub bogs, of ...
Oct 19, 2023 · A bog is a freshwater wetland of soft, spongy ground consisting mainly of partially decayed plant matter called peat. Bogs are generally found in cool, northern climates. They often develop in poorly draining lake basins created by glaciers during the most recent ice age. The world's largest wetland is a series of bogs in the Siberia region of ...
