Restoring peatlands to their (almost) natural state

by Martin LaSalle, Université de Montréal
November 28, 2024

Ponds created to restore bogs degraded by peat extraction take over 17 years to develop ecosystems similar to natural ponds.

That is the finding of a study by master’s students Émilie Jolin and Mahmud Hassan and doctoral student Julien Arsenault, supervised by Julie Talbot of the Department of Geography at Université de Montréal and Line Rochefort at Université Laval. Their results were recently published in Ecological Applications.

Peatlands are age-old ecosystems that play a key role in mitigating climate change because of their capacity to store vast amounts of carbon as organic matter. In a process spanning tens of thousands of years, they accumulate this organic matter, which we call peat, to a depth of up to seven metres.

But intensive exploitation of peatlands for purposes such as horticultural peat has led to their degradation. In eastern Canada, efforts to restore these peatlands to their natural state have been underway for the past 25 years.

Part of this process involves artificially recreating the shallow pools that typically dot peatlands. These pools are especially important for local biodiversity as they provide habitat for a wide range of amphibian, bird and plant species.

Keep reading: https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2024/11/28/restoring-peatlands-to-their-almost-natural-state/

Read the Ecological Applications paper: https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2024/11/28/restoring-peatlands-to-their-almost-natural-state/