Peat

Lump of peat

Peat, also known as turf, is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation or organic matter. It is unique to natural areas called peatlands, bogs, mires, moors, or muskegs. The peatland ecosystem is the most efficient carbon sink on the planet, because peatland plants capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) naturally released from the peat, maintaining an equilibrium. In natural peatlands, the annual rate of biomass production is greater than the rate of decomposition, but it takes thousands of years for peatlands to develop the deposits. Peat forms in wetland conditions, where flooding or stagnant water obstructs the flow of oxygen from the atmosphere, slowing the rate of decomposition. Peat properties, such as organic matter content and saturated hydraulic conductivity, can exhibit high spatial heterogeneity.

Peat is not a renewable source of energy, due to its extraction rate in industrialized countries far exceeding its slow regrowth rate, and as it is also reported that peat regrowth takes place only in less than half of peatlands. Centuries of burning and draining of peat by humans has released a significant amount of CO₂ into the atmosphere, and much peatland restoration is needed to help limit climate change.

Dependencies

• Peat
  • Carbon
  • Nitrogen

See also

• Coal
• Soils

References

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Peat, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).