Peat Bogs: Living Dead

music; ambience: Evening sounds, Lake

What’s thousands of years old, both alive and dead, larger than Texas and both good and bad for the atmosphere? Stay tuned. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Peat is undecomposed plant matter – it’s found around the world in peat bogs and peatlands. To explain the rest of it, including the part about “the living dead”, we’ve got Larry Smith, an associate professor in the Department of Geography at UCLA.

“Peat is mulch-like, but growing on the surface of it is a living plant layer, which, after it dies, will be buried by the next plant layer, and will become peat itself. It’s like a thick layer of mulch with a living skin of plant material at the surface. In North America, isolated peatlands have been around for as long as twelve thousand years ago. The peatlands of the west Siberian lowland are the most extensive in the world. If you pushed them all together, they cover about two hundred and thirty-three thousand square miles, which is roughly the size of Texas. Peatlands play a dual role in terms of their effect on greenhouse gas emissions and the climate. They they both withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere, which is good, from a global warming point of view, but they also emit methane, which is bad, in terms of global warming. When a peatland is healthy, if you will, or rapidly growing, it is storing CO2, but releasing methane. The concern among scientists is if you dry out and decompose a peatland, it may switch from being a sink of CO2 to a source. It could potentially turn into a giant compost heap, and begin outgassing CO2.”

Well, not to get too bogged down with all this, we’ll hear more on peat in future programs. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation.

music

Peat Bogs: Living Dead

What's larger than the state of Texas, thousands of years old, and both good and bad for the Earth's climate?
Air Date:02/19/2008
Scientist:
Transcript:


music; ambience: Evening sounds, Lake

What's thousands of years old, both alive and dead, larger than Texas and both good and bad for the atmosphere? Stay tuned. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Peat is undecomposed plant matter - it's found around the world in peat bogs and peatlands. To explain the rest of it, including the part about "the living dead", we've got Larry Smith, an associate professor in the Department of Geography at UCLA.

"Peat is mulch-like, but growing on the surface of it is a living plant layer, which, after it dies, will be buried by the next plant layer, and will become peat itself. It’s like a thick layer of mulch with a living skin of plant material at the surface. In North America, isolated peatlands have been around for as long as twelve thousand years ago. The peatlands of the west Siberian lowland are the most extensive in the world. If you pushed them all together, they cover about two hundred and thirty-three thousand square miles, which is roughly the size of Texas. Peatlands play a dual role in terms of their effect on greenhouse gas emissions and the climate. They they both withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere, which is good, from a global warming point of view, but they also emit methane, which is bad, in terms of global warming. When a peatland is healthy, if you will, or rapidly growing, it is storing CO2, but releasing methane. The concern among scientists is if you dry out and decompose a peatland, it may switch from being a sink of CO2 to a source. It could potentially turn into a giant compost heap, and begin outgassing CO2."

Well, not to get too bogged down with all this, we'll hear more on peat in future programs. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation.

music