Talk:Peat

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Passesb.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 06:18, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

no more fens

it says on the article for fens, that they are often confused with bogs but are not actually bogs, so i removed fens from the synonym list in the beginning of the article.

carbon content high or low?

In the section "Fires" it says (first sentence): Peat has a high carbon content and can burn under low moisture conditions.

In the section "Tissue Preservation" it says (last sentence): Peat represents the initial stage of coal formation, so its carbon content is low.

I find this confusing - could anybody in the know please clarify this?

Conjecture Inserted into Middle of Article

An editor had inserted the following conjecture into the middle of the article after the line: "Using carbon-dating, scientists found that peat in peat bogs started forming 360 million years ago based on it currently containing 550 gigatonnes of carbon."

(Note: As is clearly stated in the above link to carbon-dating, 50,000 years is the outer limit for accuracy in carbon-dating. This statement claims to use carbon-dating to put a 360 million year age on the peat, which is not possible.) (Is it possible the writer meant Potassium-argon dating?)

I haven't yet checked to see if there is any validity to this but wanted to move it here for discussion/consideration rather than just outright removing it. PiousCorn (talk) 01:31, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

I looked into this a bit more and an archive of the reference at 16 points to this document, which points to the reference "Charman, D.J. 2002. Peatlands and environmental change. John Wiley, Chichester". Which, I can't access. But this article seemed rather relevant since it lists an estimate of 455 Pg of carbon via radio-dating and seems to suggest that most of the carbon present began accumulating 12-15,000 years ago, which is in line with the preceding referenced statement in the article itself. Given that the estimated age of formation and the amount sequestered are mentioned elsewhere in the article, I'm going to delete this line as redundant.PiousCorn (talk) 02:33, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

"Mossy Land" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Mossy Land and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 March 2#Mossy Land until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 19:56, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Wetland Science and Management 2023

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 10 January 2023 and 20 April 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sophie1826 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Sophie1826 (talk) 21:27, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Characteristics/uses

There are three overlapping sections on characteristics and uses of peat in this article. I'm planning to try resolve this. TatjanaClimate (talk) 16:09, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Misleading citation

The article reads: "Peat can store nutrients although it is not fertile itself – it is polyelectrolytic with a high ion-exchange capacity due to its oxidized lignin.[citation needed] Peat is discouraged as a soil amendment by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England, since 2003.[23]"

This snippet of the article claims that peat is not fertile, then cites the RBG who "discourage" it's use as a soil ammendment. The implication is that peat is a bad soil ammendment, but the content of the citation suggests that it is actually discouraged from use for a variety of political reasons that have nothing to do with peat being an effective amendment. Seems like there was a bit of a bait and switch with the citation that brings into question the downplaying of peat as a valid amendment. 2603:8080:2B00:11D4:1805:3AFF:FEA6:D3AD (talk) 01:24, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't really see the problem. The first sentence has a clear [citation needed] tag which shows that there's not a source for the statement. The second sentence is unrelated and has a separate citation of its own. Each sentence in that Agriculture paragraph gives a separate piece of information related to peat and agriculture. Averixus (talk) 07:03, 3 September 2024 (UTC)