Peat or Pete? Bog on the Trail.
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While on a recent biking/caching trip we stopped to do a cache here. I have many caches located on PEI but wanted to have an Earth Cache and this is a great location for one.
Some 60% of the planet’s total wetlands are peat bogs, which cover an estimated 3 to 4 percent of the world’s land mass. Canada accounts for some of the largest wetlands regions on earth.
Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation matter. Peat forms in wetlands or peatlands, variously called bogs, moors, muskegs, pocosins, mires, and peat swamp forests.
Formation
A peat bog is a habitat where development is influenced by a humid substrate and where peat accumulates more quickly than it can decompose. This is an ecosystem where water circulates little or not at all and in which the litter accumulation rate significantly exceeds decomposition and humification rates. In most ecosystems, plants generally produce a certain amount of leaves, stems, etc. Each year, part of which dies, falls to the ground and comprises litter. During the same year, other organisms, generally bacteria, decompose part of this litter by converting organic plant and animal residue into mineral matter. In a peat bog environment, water saturation creates a lack of oxygen that reduces decomposer activity. Therefore, the portion of the annual production of organic matter that accumulates on the ground exceeds the amount that decomposers can convert into humus.
In peat bogs, plants often grow under anoxic conditions (lack of oxygen) because of the high water table, but primarily due to the extreme lack of minerals and nutrients characteristic of peat bogs, These conditions explain he frail tree structures that are present. Despite their advanced age, trees are short and small in diameter; they develop sparse foliage and produce fewer cones. Sphagnums are the most abundant and widespread bryophyte on the planet and are one of the key elements of a peat ecosystem.
Peat layer growth and the degree of decomposition (or humidification) depends principally on its composition and on the degree of waterlogging. Peat formed in very wet conditions will grow considerably faster, and be less decomposed, than that in drier places. This allows climatologists to use peat as an indicator of climatic change. The composition of peat can also be used to reconstruct ancient ecologies by examining the types and quantities of its organic elements.
Under the right conditions, peat is the earliest stage in the formation of lignite coal. Most modern peat bogs formed in high latitudes after the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age some 9000 years ago. They usually grow slowly, at the rate of about a millimeter per year.
The peat in the world’s peatlands has been forming for 360 million years and contains 550 Gt of carbon.
Types of Peat Material
Peat material is either fibric, hemic, or sapric. Fibric peats are the least decomposed, and comprise intact fiber. Hemic peats are somewhat decomposed, and sapric are the most decomposed. Phragmites peat is one composed of reed grass (Phragmites australis) and other grasses, and is denser than many other types of peat.
Types of Peatland
Six principal types of peatlands are widely recognized. These are:
1. Blanket mires: Rain-fed peatlands generally 1 to 3 m deep. They generally develop in cool climates with small seasonal temperature fluctuations and over 1 m of rainfall and over 160 rain days each year (Ireland & UK);
2. Raised mires: Rain-fed, potentially deep peatlands occurring principally in lowland areas (Northern Europe, USSR & North America);
3. String mires: Flat or concave peatlands with a string-like pattern of hummocks (northern Scandinavia, western USSR & North America);
4. Tundra mires: Peatlands with a shallow peat layer (500 mm thick), dominated by sedges and grasses; they form in permafrost areas (Alaska, Canada & USSR);
5. Palsa mires: Peatland typified by characteristic high mounds, each with a permanently frozen core, with wet depressions between the mounds. These develop where the ground surface is only frozen for part of the year (USSR, Canada & Scandinavia);
6. Peat swamps: Forested peatlands including both rain- and groundwater-fed types, commonly recorded in tropical regions with high rainfall (southeast Asia & Florida)
Characteristics and Uses
Peat bogs were once erroneously considered diseases, unproductive and dangerous. As an ecosystem, peat bogs offer a variety of ecological goods and services and contribute to mankind and the quality of the environment. The annual biomass production they generate represents a vast carbon reserve.
Peat is soft and easily compressed. Under pressure, water in the peat is forced out. Upon drying, peat can be used as a fuel, having industrial importance in some countries, such as Ireland, Scotland and Finland. In many countries where trees are often scarce, peat is traditionally used for cooking and domestic heating. (When dry, peat can be a major fire hazard, as peat fires can burn almost indefinitely (months, years, even centuries, or at least until the fuel is exhausted), even underground, provided there is a source of oxygen. [Recent burning of peat bogs in Indonesia, with their large and deep growths containing more than 50 billion tons of carbon, has contributed to increases in world carbon dioxide levels. In 1997, these fires released the equivalent to 13-40% of the amount released by global fossil fuel burning, and greater than the carbon uptake of the world’s biosphere.]
Peat is also dug into soil to increase the soil’s capacity to retain moisture and add nutrients. This makes it important agriculturally for farmers and gardeners, and as a natural means of flood mitigation. Peat swamps serve like a natural form of water catchment whereby any overflow will be absorbed by the peat.
Peat softens water by acting as an ion exchanger, it contains substances good for plants and for the reproductive health of fishes, and can even prevent algae growth and kill microorganisms. Peat often stains the water yellow or brown due to the leaching of tannins.
Peat bogs also contain reserves of fresh water, the buffering capacity of which partially regulates peak flow rates during heavy rainfall. Sphagnum bogs are also renowned for their tremendous filtration capacity. Peat bogs can be important for drinking water quality, decontamination of some heavy metals or immobilizing airborne pollutants.
Thanks to El Nimrod for allowing me to borrow his write-up about Peat Bogs.
1) To Claim this cache send me approximate size of the visible bog area in Meters or Acres.
2) A photo of you,GPSr with bog in background.
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