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Drying peat turves, mechanically extracted on an industrial scale, on Goldenstedt moor, near Vechta (Lower Saxony, Germany). Peat has been extracted here on an industrial scale for more than a century, but the practice is now declining as few peat moors are left and cutting is now only allowed on former farmland. Peat bogs cover just 3% of the Earth’s surface, but hold about 25% of all the carbon stored in soils, twice as much as all the forests in the world combined, so how they are conserved or exploited is an increasingly hot topic. (Photo by Nick Upton/naturepl.com/LDY Agency)
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