Kouchibouguac Peat Bog EarthCache
Hidden : 4/24/2024
Difficulty:
1.5 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size: other (other)

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Geocache Description:


NOTE: This cache is seasonal. It is NOT available during the winter when Parks Canada closes the trail & road. "Found" logs will not be accepted during that time.

The “Bog Trail” is an easy, scenic, linear trail that is self-guided. The first part crosses through the forest to the edges of the peat bog, where visitors can climb a six-metre spiral staircase to the top of the tower that provides a bird’s-eye view of the bog. The round trip, reciprocal trail is under 4 km and should take 60-90 minutes.


Bog Trail


Some 60% of the planet’s total wetlands are peat bogs, which cover an estimated 3 to 4 percent of the world’s land mass. More than third of the world’s peatlands are in Canada (click), and they cover about 170 million hectares of our country, about 14 per cent of the total surface of Canada. Also called “muskegs” (an aboriginal term for “soggy ground”), fens and bogs are the most extensive wetlands in our boreal forest.

Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation matter. Peat forms in wetlands or peatlands, variously called bogs, moors, muskegs, pocosins, mires, and peat swamp forests.

Peat Moss

Formation

A peat bog is a habitat where development is influenced by a humid substrate and where peat accumulates more quickly than it can decompose. This is an ecosystem where water circulates little or not at all and in which the litter accumulation rate significantly exceeds decomposition and humification rates. In most ecosystems, plants generally produce a certain amount of leaves, stems, etc. Each year, part of which dies, falls to the ground and comprises litter. During the same year, other organisms, generally bacteria, decompose part of this litter by converting organic plant and animal residue into mineral matter. In a peat bog environment, water saturation creates a lack of oxygen that reduces decomposer activity. Therefore, the portion of the annual production of organic matter that accumulates on the ground exceeds the amount that decomposers can convert into humus.

In peat bogs, plants often grow under anoxic conditions (lack of oxygen) because of the high water table, but primarily due to the extreme lack of minerals and nutrients characteristic of peat bogs, These conditions explain the frail tree structures that are present. Despite their advanced age, trees are short and small in diameter; they develop sparse foliage and produce fewer cones. Sphagnums are the most abundant and widespread bryophyte on the planet and are one of the key elements of a peat ecosystem.

Peat layer growth and the degree of decomposition (or humidification) depends principally on its composition and on the degree of waterlogging. Peat formed in very wet conditions will grow considerably faster, and be less decomposed, than that in drier places. This allows climatologists to use peat as an indicator of climatic change. The composition of peat can also be used to reconstruct ancient ecologies by examining the types and quantities of its organic elements.

Under the right conditions, peat is the earliest stage in the formation of lignite coal. Most modern peat bogs formed in high latitudes after the retreat of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age some 9000 years ago. They usually grow slowly, at the rate of about a millimeter per year.

The peat in the world’s peatlands has been forming for 360 million years and contains 550 Gt of carbon.

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Types of Peat Material

Peat material is either fibric, hemic, or sapric. Fibric peats are the least decomposed, and comprise intact fiber. Hemic peats are somewhat decomposed, and sapric are the most decomposed. Phragmites peat is one composed of reed grass (Phragmites australis) and other grasses, and is denser than many other types of peat.

Peat Moss

Types of Peatland

Six principal types of peatlands are widely recognized. These are:

1. Blanket mires: Rain-fed peatlands generally 1 to 3 m deep. They generally develop in cool climates with small seasonal temperature fluctuations and over 1 m of rainfall and over 160 rain days each year (Ireland & UK);

2. Raised mires: Rain-fed, potentially deep peatlands occurring principally in lowland areas (Northern Europe, USSR & North America);

3. String mires: Flat or concave peatlands with a string-like pattern of hummocks (northern Scandinavia, western USSR & North America);

4. Tundra mires: Peatlands with a shallow peat layer (500 mm thick), dominated by sedges and grasses; they form in permafrost areas (Alaska, Canada & USSR);

5. Palsa mires: Peatland typified by characteristic high mounds, each with a permanently frozen core, with wet depressions between the mounds. These develop where the ground surface is only frozen for part of the year (USSR, Canada & Scandinavia);

6. Peat swamps: Forested peatlands including both rain- and groundwater-fed types, commonly recorded in tropical regions with high rainfall (southeast Asia & Florida)

Characteristics and Uses

Peat bogs were once erroneously considered diseases, unproductive and dangerous. As an ecosystem, peat bogs offer a variety of ecological goods and services and contribute to mankind and the quality of the environment. The annual biomass production they generate represents a vast carbon reserve.

Peat is soft and easily compressed. Under pressure, water in the peat is forced out. Upon drying, peat can be used as a fuel, having industrial importance in some countries, such as Ireland, Scotland and Finland. In many countries where trees are often scarce, peat is traditionally used for cooking and domestic heating. (When dry, peat can be a major fire hazard, as peat fires can burn almost indefinitely (months, years, even centuries, or at least until the fuel is exhausted), even underground, provided there is a source of oxygen. [Recent burning of peat bogs in Indonesia, with their large and deep growths containing more than 50 billion tons of carbon, has contributed to increases in world carbon dioxide levels. In 1997, these fires released the equivalent to 13-40% of the amount released by global fossil fuel burning, and greater than the carbon uptake of the world’s biosphere.]

Peat is also dug into soil to increase the soil’s capacity to retain moisture and add nutrients. This makes it important agriculturally for farmers and gardeners, and as a natural means of flood mitigation. Peat swamps serve like a natural form of water catchment whereby any overflow will be absorbed by the peat.

Peat softens water by acting as an ion exchanger, it contains substances good for plants and for the reproductive health of fishes, and can even prevent algae growth and kill microorganisms. Peat often stains the water yellow or brown due to the leaching of tannins.

Peat bogs also contain reserves of fresh water, the buffering capacity of which partially regulates peak flow rates during heavy rainfall. Sphagnum bogs are also renowned for their tremendous filtration capacity. Peat bogs can be important for drinking water quality, decontamination of some heavy metals or immobilizing airborne pollutants.

New Brunswick & Kouchibouguac

The peatlands of New Brunswick are one of the Province's most important ecosystems. New Brunswick's peatlands are also among the few patterned peatlands in the world not underlain by permafrost.

An intricate relationship between vegetation, subtle topography, hydrology and climate has formed some of the largest and best developed peatlands in the Maritimes. In general, the deposits have been forming since the last glacial period (about 11,000 to 13,000 years ago), accumulating at a rate of approximately 30 cm per 1,000 years. Peat lands in raised ombotrophic bogs and fens (bogs receiving all their water from precipitation, not lakes, glaciers or groundwater) cover nearly a quarter of the Kouchibouguac National Park. Some bogs occupy areas of less than one hectare, while others exceed 500 hectares.

Raised bogs are one of New Brunswick's most prominent peat landforms. These forested areas are domed in cross section, isolating the bog surface from mineral-rich runoff draining from adjacent uplands. When a bog has developed sufficiently in elevation, it forms a crest of black spruce that radiates out from the centre, when viewed from aerial photos. Trees gradually become more stunted downslope from the crest as the peat becomes more saturated. At the lower margins, spruce trees give way to non-forested sphagnum lawns (muskeg).

Besides its ecological & environmental importance, peat is also mined in New Brunswick, with most of the peat extraction used in horticulture; added to soil or in growing mixes as a soil conditioner to loosen clay and improve moisture retention. New Brunswick's peat resource only began to be exploited in the 1940s, starting with a bog in Shippagan, before operations expanded across the region. More than 13,000,000 bales of peat are extracted annually by the NB peat industry today.

To claim this Earthcache, e-mail me the answers to the following:

1. What are two (2) different functions of this bog?

2. Look around. What geological feature(s)/barrier(s) helped create an environment necessary to turn this area into a bog?

3. Examine the top layer of the peat (the living part) and describe the prominent constituent: sphagnum moss, salt grass & sedges, or heaths?

4. If sphagnum moss builds up at a rate of 1 mm/year, and has done so here for 6000 years, how thick should the layer of peat be in this bog?

5. According to the information panel — Silent Predators of the Bog — found along the boardwalk, what are the three (3) carnivorous plants found in this bog?

6. According to the information panels along the boardwalk, what zone is the newest & thinnest part of this domed bog at its outer edge called?

7. According to the information panels along the boardwalk, what is the outward sloping margin of this bog called?

8. Post a picture in your log with a personal item or hand in picture to prove you were there.

[REQUIRED] In accordance with the updated guidelines from Geocaching Headquarters published in June 2019, photos are now an acceptable logging requirement and WILL BE REQUIRED TO LOG THIS CACHE. Please provide a photo of yourself or a personal item in the picture to prove you visited the site.

Do NOT post your answers on your log, encrypted or otherwise.

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