Northern Peatlands
18 images Created 30 Nov 2023
Nestled in the heart of Adirondack Park there are vast swaths of sphagnum moss stretching across the horizon. Ancient black spruce trees and fields of sedges pepper a dense blanket of green, red, and gold moss. This spongy riot of color and texture conceals another world beneath the surface. What looks like a wide and flat valley is actually a floating raft of vegetation submerged in water.
This is not a meadow or tundra stretching across solid ground. This is a water-logged burial ground frozen in time.
The plants thriving on the surface are rooted upon an ancient, water-logged bed of their dead and decaying ancestors. In some areas, this mat is deep enough to bury a three-story building. The oldest vegetation at the bottom of the peatland can be tens of thousands of years old. Saturated in water and deprived of oxygen, dead plant material decays at a sluggish pace, compressed under the pressure of the next generation of living plants.
These expansive, floating mats are called peatlands, and their future is in our hands.
Our changing climate threatens to upset the delicate balance of water in these habitats. Researchers are studying what these changes might mean for peatlands, and whether they will continue to persist throughout their current range.
This is not a meadow or tundra stretching across solid ground. This is a water-logged burial ground frozen in time.
The plants thriving on the surface are rooted upon an ancient, water-logged bed of their dead and decaying ancestors. In some areas, this mat is deep enough to bury a three-story building. The oldest vegetation at the bottom of the peatland can be tens of thousands of years old. Saturated in water and deprived of oxygen, dead plant material decays at a sluggish pace, compressed under the pressure of the next generation of living plants.
These expansive, floating mats are called peatlands, and their future is in our hands.
Our changing climate threatens to upset the delicate balance of water in these habitats. Researchers are studying what these changes might mean for peatlands, and whether they will continue to persist throughout their current range.
