Plantwatch: keeping the carbon trapped in Scotland’s vast peat bog

The peatlands of Scotland's Flow Country store 400m tonnes of carbon but are under threat amid warmer summers

Boglands are precious landscapes, and the vast wilderness of bogs of the Flow Country in northern Scotland is considered the world's largest area of blanket bog - a rare type of peatland that covers the landscape like a blanket and which forms in a cool, wet climate.

The peat is created largely from sphagnum moss and when the plant dies its remains do not fully decompose in the bog's acid waters, and so the dead moss becomes buried and turned into peat along with its carbon contents. The Flow Country is so vast its peatland stores 400m tonnes of carbon, more than double the carbon stored in all the UK's woodlands, and a huge contribution to fighting the climate crisis.