Environment Counts | Drying peatlands could contribute significantly to global carbon emissions :

Peatlands cover between only 2 to 3 % of the planet’s land surface, but store 600-700 billion tonnes of carbon or 25 per cent of the planet’s soil carbon. This is comparable to the total carbon in the atmosphere. Peat in undisturbed moist peatlands does not burn which has led to a build-up of peat carbon storage in boreal and tropical regions over long timescales. But drying as a result of climate change and human activity increases the frequency and extent of peat fires. Across continental North America the mean annual peat and burn area has more than doubled in the past several decades. The widespread and deep-burning peat fires in Indonesia in 1997 and 1998 released approximately 0.95 Gt of carbon24, 37, equivalent to ~15% of global fossil fuel emissions at that time. It is clear that peat fires have the potential to contribute significantly to global emissions of greenhouse gases. M.T. Turetsky, Nature Geoscience 8, 11–14 (2015) doi:10.1038/ngeo2325