Peat and Peatlands
Peat is really just made up of around 98% water and
2% dead plants that once grew on the bog surface.
This doesn’t sound very exciting or valuable but
it can be very useful: peat has been used for
thousands of years as a source of fuel in areas where
wood was scarce and it is used extensively now as
garden compost. However, because peat grows so
slowly, it is not a renewable resource and will
eventually run out if we carry on destroying it.
The future for
peatlands: threats and conservation
Scottish Wildlife Trust Peatlands Campaign: www.swt.org.uk/
Why should we care?
Bogs are very wet and difficult to walk on and they
often look bleak and lifeless but this is far from
the truth. They contain many special or endangered
plants and animals which cannot live anywhere else.
A watery oasis: biodiversity on
peatlands
RSPB: www.rspb.org.uk
Irish Peatland Conservation Council: www.ipcc.ie/index.html
Link to GHMCNP
The
Peat Library
People who work on conservation, plant or animal
ecology are not the only ones interested in bogs.
Peat bogs are also very valuable to people who study
the past: archaeologists, palaeoecologists
(investigating past ecology) and palaeoclimatologists
(who study changes in the climate in the past).
There are two characteristics of bogs
that make them so important as records of the past:
1. Peat
provides almost perfect conditions for preserving
organic materials and these can tell us a huge amount
about past environments, as you can read below.
2. Peat
‘grows’ upwards through time, with the
oldest part of the bog at the bottom and the youngest
on top, under the living surface. These layers
are called a stratigraphy or a stratigraphic
sequence.
How a bog ‘grows’>
More
