peat bogs

• Peat bog


  Dense wetlands filled with partially decayed vegetation. The waterlogged conditions and the bog's acidity prevents the vegetation from fully decaying when it dies. Instead, it builds up very slowly over thousands of years to become peat.
• Border mires


  • 58 separate peat bog sites in and adjacent to Kielder Forest that store more water than its reservoir, released steadily to reduce flash floods
• Peat bog restoration activities

  1. Blocking of ditches to reinstate the integrity of the bogs' hydrological systems

  2. Cutting and removing trees from a 200 ha area to enlarge the blanket bog area

  3. Remove naturally regenerating trees from open bog

  4. Creation of 130 wader pools
• Plants in peat bogs

  • sundew
  • cranberry
  • cotton
• Insects in peat bogs

  • Black darter
  • Common hawker
  • Golden-ringed dragonflies
  • Heath butterflies
• Blanket bogs

  • Stretch across vast areas of land, sometimes covering a whole landscape
• Raised bogs

  • Dome-shaped masses of peat that have formed in low-lying natural basins like former lakes or wet hollows, standing several metres higher than the surrounding land
• Quaking bogs


  • Develop over a lake or pond with bog mats (thick layers of vegetation) about a metre thick on top, bouncing when walked on
• Bogs are not easy places to live, but uniquely adapted plants can be found in these acidic conditions
• Golden eagles or hen harriers can be seen hunting across the wide skies and open landscapes of Scotland's blanket bogs
• Turtles, frogs, insects and insect-eating birds are also common in bogs. There aren't many fish in bogs because of the low levels of oxygen in the water. Mammals like the snowshoe hare, moose, beaver and muskrat can also be found in and around bogs
• Carbon store


  Peatlands are among the most carbon-rich ecosystems on Earth, storing nearly 30% of the world's soil carbon despite covering just 3% of the surface
• UK peatland stores more carbon than the combined forests of Britain, France and Germany
• Healthy peatlands capture CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, because the plants that grow on peatlands do not fully decompose under wet, anaerobic conditions, they do not release carbon which would otherwise be returned to the atmosphere as CO2 when they become dead organic matter
• Peatlands in the UK and around the world are estimated to be a net source of greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, as opposed to a net sink, due to the way they have been managed in the past and now in the present day
• Peatlands


  • Provide important nesting and feeding grounds for many wading birds, as well as important habitats for rare insects and plants
  • Due to the unique flora and fauna they support, and their global rarity, blanket bogs have sometimes been referred to as the 'rainforests' of the UK
  • UK's peatlands are globally important and the mosses that grow there are vital in our fight against climate change
• Plants and animals in peatlands

  • Over 380 species of sphagnum moss
  • Carnivorous plants like insect-eating sundews
  • Cotton grass that provides food for the large heath butterfly and black grouse
  • Golden plovers, dunlins and greenshanks that feed on the insects and nest among the bog vegetation
• Healthy peatlands can reduce flood risk by slowing the flow of water from the uplands, and by providing floodplain storage in the lowlands
• Peat itself forms through the partial decomposition of matter through acidic and anaerobic conditions, as the peat builds up, it develops the ability to store vast quantities of water, possibly up to 810 liters of water per square meter
• 94% of Britain's raised bog and 99% of Ireland's has been lost over the last 100 years due to peat cutting, drainage and afforestation. And 44% of Scotland's internationally important blanket peat bog was lost to afforestation and drainage from the 1940s to 1980s
• Peat bog conservation efforts

  • Maintaining and enhancing protected areas for biodiversity
  • Conserving functional ecosystem units as the building blocks for habitat networks
  • Preventing damage from development and conflicting land management
  • Ensuring the full long-term costs of potentially damaging activity is properly taken into account during the decision making process
• Peat bog restoration project

  • The large-scale Border mires project has restored some 2,000 hectares of peatlands across the Border Mires around Kielder Forest, cleared conifer plantations, blocked thousands of agricultural ditches and created 130 wader pools to help rare birds such as curlew to return to the area