*[Enwl-eng] [wildlife-climate] Fwd: Peat Nourishes and Saves

[ENWL]

Mires, moors, marshes, fens, are all climate champions.


                              News of the world environment

                               NEWSLETTER | NOVEMBER 19, 2021
















                              Peat Nourishes and Saves
                              Peat has been on my mind lately. Here in 
Canada’s Northwest Territories, I’m surrounded by forested peatlands. 
Spruce, birch, and tamarack grow out of the soggy, black soil and spongy 
moss. A few months ago, the ground glistened with water and popped with the 
color of peat-loving wild cranberries and rose hips. These days, it’s 
covered with snow. When I step into the woods, I can hear the waterlogged 
earth crack with ice under each step.

                              For the Journal's upcoming winter issue, I 
reviewed journalist Edward Struzik’s Swamplands, an ode to peat and the 
scientists who study it. In the introduction to his book, Struzik points to 
the variance of peatlands and the words we use to describe them. We have 
mires, moors, and marshes. Swamps. Fens. In northern Canada and Alaska, you’ll 
hear muskeg, a word of Cree origin. There are hummocks, palsas, pingos, and 
pocosins. And, of course, there are bogs — one of which was a “jewell which 
dazzled” Thoreau.

                              Our language of peat hints at the complexity 
of these ecosystems and their influence on us. Hat tip to Robert Macfarlane: 
Language is central to our relationship with place, and peat seems to have 
taken a main role in our placemaking.

                              On a broader scale, it’s important for us to 
recognize the enormous significance — ecologically, culturally — of intact 
peat-based ecosystems, particularly now that we’ve spent the last 200 years 
draining and terraforming them for farmland or other uses. As Merritt 
Turetsky, director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the 
University of Colorado Boulder says, mires, moors, and bogs are all “climate 
champions.”

                              The good news is that this crucial 
conversation has started to happen on the global stage. At COP26 in Glasgow 
earlier this month, peat got a lot of play through the Peatlands Pavilion, 
where scientists could talk with delegates directly about peat as a climate 
change solution. After an otherwise disappointing climate conference, this 
gives me an ounce of hope.

                              But as we contemplate peat as a climate 
solution, I’m also inspired by peat as place. So this Thanksgiving, here in 
the muskeg, surrounded by berry bushes frozen and dormant for the winter, I’m 
going to enjoy my cranberry sauce a little more than usual, and give thanks 
to the peat they grow on.



                              Austin Price
                              Contributing Editor, Earth Island Journal

                              Photo by: Sophia Smirnova




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От: Earth Island Journal <editor at earthisland.org>
Date: сб, 20 нояб. 2021 г. в 03:51
Subject: Peat Nourishes and Saves



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From: Svet Zabelin
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2021 8:21 AM
Subject: [wildlife-climate] Fwd: Peat Nourishes and Saves




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