Peat Bogs: Nature's Climate Regulators
By Barry Babcock
Have you experienced a walk on a warm summer evening and felt a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature when approaching a bog? Peat bogs are natures air-conditioning system. Bogs are the last eco-system to warm in the spring and repeat this heating and cooling process on a daily basis through the summer and autumn.
Bogs are important local climate regulators that aid in giving us predictable outcomes in our weather. Bogs are also valuable as areas of carbon sequestration due to the formation of peat moss that grows at the top and dies at the bottom. The accumulating weight forces the peat deeper. Without light, the lower portions of peat die, releasing acids and tannins which halt bacteria from accomplishing natures decay process.
No two bogs are alike but generally bogs come in two types: ‘quacking bogs,’ whose surface appears as a turf or a saturated lawn that floats on water and gives one the sensation of walking on a trampoline and ‘static’ or ‘grounded’ bogs that displace the water beneath and may extend to great depths. The only source of water for a true bog is rain and snow. However, often times one will find a typical northern bog surrounded by a poor fen where surface or ground waters enter bringing nutrients with them. It is around these perimeters of a bog where one will find sedge and other more diversified plant species in this lone mineral rich area of a bog. Where this occurs there will normally be a moat or lagg around the outside edges of the bog. In a nutrient poor bog where plants struggle for existence such as leather leaf and other members of the heather family, they have developed strategies to compensate in obtaining nutrients such as mycorrhiza (a fungus/root symbiotic relationship that aids in obtaining nutrients.) The leaves of leather leaf, bog rosemary, bog-laurel, Labrador tea, and other bog residents have adapted a tough and acidic taste in their foliage to repel wildlife.
Peat is sphagnum moss of which over thirty species are known in North America. What makes sphagnum unique are the two types of basic cells: hyaline cells which are large empty cells that can absorb up to twenty times its weight in water when submerged but are filled with air when growing above the surface. The other cells are chlorophyll cells where the photosynthesis process occurs. The hyaline cells make peat a sought after commodity for gardening soil. These same absorbent cells were used as a diaper fill by Native Americans and the plant itself contains a steroid with antiseptic properties.
If there is such a thing as a climax stage of succession to a peat bog, it is a muskeg. Muskegs are grounded bogs that have black spruce and tamarack taking hold. A bog that goes the route of forming sedge peat or the fen stage rather than sphagnum peat will evolve into a rich cedar swamp. Spruce muskegs were the favored haunts of woodland caribou which were last found in Minnesota in the Big Bog of Pine Island State Forest in Koochiching County as late as the 1940’s. The Big Bog is a 300,000 acre peatland, fifty miles long and twenty miles wide, and is arguably the largest remaining true wilderness left in Minnesota.
A special treasure to be found in bogs is cranberries which ripen in the autumn. Where ever there is sphagnum there will be cranberries clinging close to the surface. An oddity observed in bogs are reported sightings of strange lights referred to as "will-o-the-wisp." These are caused by the release and ignition of methane gas. Bogs create and store methane gas.
Because of the conditions in a sphagnum peat bog that inhibit decomposition, the compacting peat forms a substance called “black butter” which is about 60% carbon. Over great periods of time, further compression, organic activity, and loss of moisture, black butter will eventually become bituminous coal.
Russia holds the largest amount of sphagnum, estimates site 223 billion dry tons. In the United States, Minnesota and Maine have the largest remaining deposits of sphagnum peat bogs. According to estimates, approximately half of the United States peat bogs have been drained with about ninety million acres remaining. Minnesota which has the largest remaining areas of peatlands has 7.5 million acres. Minnesota’s peat bogs cover 14% of our land area and hold 37% of its stored carbon compared with only 3% of our state forests. Currently about 3000 acres are being mined for sphagnum in the Arrowhead and another 820 acres in the Big Bog in Pine Island State Forest for garden peat.
Although peat bogs are the least diversified of Minnesota’s eight wetland types, many conservationists feel their importance as climate regulators and carbon sequestered sites are too important to risk tampering with for such short sited commodities as gardening peat. Plus the notion that maybe again in Minnesota’s natural history we may have the sight of caribou browsing the lichens in the Big Bog country.
For more information, consider
The Book of Swamp and Bog by John Eastman
Northwoods Wildlife by Janine M. Benyus
Minnesota Wetlands: A primer on their nature and function by the Minnesota Audubon Council & National Audubon Society
“Look deep, deep into nature than you’ll understand everything better.” Einstein
Have you experienced a walk on a warm summer evening and felt a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature when approaching a bog? Peat bogs are natures air-conditioning system. Bogs are the last eco-system to warm in the spring and repeat this heating and cooling process on a daily basis through the summer and autumn.
Bogs are important local climate regulators that aid in giving us predictable outcomes in our weather. Bogs are also valuable as areas of carbon sequestration due to the formation of peat moss that grows at the top and dies at the bottom. The accumulating weight forces the peat deeper. Without light, the lower portions of peat die, releasing acids and tannins which halt bacteria from accomplishing natures decay process.
No two bogs are alike but generally bogs come in two types: ‘quacking bogs,’ whose surface appears as a turf or a saturated lawn that floats on water and gives one the sensation of walking on a trampoline and ‘static’ or ‘grounded’ bogs that displace the water beneath and may extend to great depths. The only source of water for a true bog is rain and snow. However, often times one will find a typical northern bog surrounded by a poor fen where surface or ground waters enter bringing nutrients with them. It is around these perimeters of a bog where one will find sedge and other more diversified plant species in this lone mineral rich area of a bog. Where this occurs there will normally be a moat or lagg around the outside edges of the bog. In a nutrient poor bog where plants struggle for existence such as leather leaf and other members of the heather family, they have developed strategies to compensate in obtaining nutrients such as mycorrhiza (a fungus/root symbiotic relationship that aids in obtaining nutrients.) The leaves of leather leaf, bog rosemary, bog-laurel, Labrador tea, and other bog residents have adapted a tough and acidic taste in their foliage to repel wildlife.
Peat is sphagnum moss of which over thirty species are known in North America. What makes sphagnum unique are the two types of basic cells: hyaline cells which are large empty cells that can absorb up to twenty times its weight in water when submerged but are filled with air when growing above the surface. The other cells are chlorophyll cells where the photosynthesis process occurs. The hyaline cells make peat a sought after commodity for gardening soil. These same absorbent cells were used as a diaper fill by Native Americans and the plant itself contains a steroid with antiseptic properties.
If there is such a thing as a climax stage of succession to a peat bog, it is a muskeg. Muskegs are grounded bogs that have black spruce and tamarack taking hold. A bog that goes the route of forming sedge peat or the fen stage rather than sphagnum peat will evolve into a rich cedar swamp. Spruce muskegs were the favored haunts of woodland caribou which were last found in Minnesota in the Big Bog of Pine Island State Forest in Koochiching County as late as the 1940’s. The Big Bog is a 300,000 acre peatland, fifty miles long and twenty miles wide, and is arguably the largest remaining true wilderness left in Minnesota.
A special treasure to be found in bogs is cranberries which ripen in the autumn. Where ever there is sphagnum there will be cranberries clinging close to the surface. An oddity observed in bogs are reported sightings of strange lights referred to as "will-o-the-wisp." These are caused by the release and ignition of methane gas. Bogs create and store methane gas.
Because of the conditions in a sphagnum peat bog that inhibit decomposition, the compacting peat forms a substance called “black butter” which is about 60% carbon. Over great periods of time, further compression, organic activity, and loss of moisture, black butter will eventually become bituminous coal.
Russia holds the largest amount of sphagnum, estimates site 223 billion dry tons. In the United States, Minnesota and Maine have the largest remaining deposits of sphagnum peat bogs. According to estimates, approximately half of the United States peat bogs have been drained with about ninety million acres remaining. Minnesota which has the largest remaining areas of peatlands has 7.5 million acres. Minnesota’s peat bogs cover 14% of our land area and hold 37% of its stored carbon compared with only 3% of our state forests. Currently about 3000 acres are being mined for sphagnum in the Arrowhead and another 820 acres in the Big Bog in Pine Island State Forest for garden peat.
Although peat bogs are the least diversified of Minnesota’s eight wetland types, many conservationists feel their importance as climate regulators and carbon sequestered sites are too important to risk tampering with for such short sited commodities as gardening peat. Plus the notion that maybe again in Minnesota’s natural history we may have the sight of caribou browsing the lichens in the Big Bog country.
For more information, consider
The Book of Swamp and Bog by John Eastman
Northwoods Wildlife by Janine M. Benyus
Minnesota Wetlands: A primer on their nature and function by the Minnesota Audubon Council & National Audubon Society
“Look deep, deep into nature than you’ll understand everything better.” Einstein
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