However I would have to argue why shouldn’t we use it?
After all most of the Peatbog ecosystems are not natural ecosystems or environments after all…. They are mostly in reality only there because of man’s interference in the area over the past few thousand years, and are not natural in any way at all. Because they only exist because man has denuded those areas and especially the upland slopes above them, of the larger plant species and the original ecosystems, simply for the timber and firewood, and cleared the land for such. It is only this, which has allowed the water to pool in these lower areas and thereby creating the conditions whereby the bogs have started and grown. And a secondary enforced ecosystem has developed around these permanently wet areas. A type of ecosystem that would never have arisen except for man himself.
Now if man really wanted to help these areas surely the right thing to do would be to re-establish some of the larger plant species and trees and their surrounding ecosystems and even the old forests back in the upper slopes above the peat bogs. Which of course would lower the amounts of water siphoning through underground into the peat bogs anyway…., thereby destroying them. But re-establishing the correct natural ecosystems to the land that was there before mankind arrived.
It would be like telling Aussies not to interfere with the ecosystems that are slowly re-developing and becoming established around the saltpans here, because of our own deforestation efforts since colonisation of this country. Or even the maladjusted ecosystems that have established themselves around our towns and cities….
In certain areas of Australia they are starting to mine the salts around some of these saltpans, would you tell these miners that they should not try to help the environment by clearing the areas of some of the accumulated salts…..
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3 comments:
Helps put it in perspective the contrast between Peatbog and Salt from the Saltpans in Australia.
This is another good perspective on the issue. It´s all a lot more complicated than most people think.
It´s worth adding to what you said that trees can´t grow in very acid ground, which is the reason they can´t grow in the peat bogs. The only way the trees will ever come back is if the peat is removed.
No, just like the trees will never grow in the actual salt pans here in Aus', however replace the higher plant communities back into the areas where the rain actually falls and then flows over or under ground into these low lying areas.
By that I mean in the areas upslope (sometimes even hundreds of miles/km), from the salt pans/peat bogs and the water will not get to flow down into these water collection areas.
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