In the heart of the Colombian Amazon, the towering mountains of the Serranía del Chiribiquete harbor secrets including South America’s oldest rock art. The remote site was off-limits and poorly known for decades, as Chiribiquete National Park was also a stronghold for the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Now, in the wake of a shaky peace process that has provided greater security and access to some regions, the park is revealing another secret: In the shadow of the mountains lie some of the densest peat deposits in South America. Peat is the accumulation of partially decayed organic matter in wetlands, compressed by time into dense soils that store more carbon per hectare than any other type of landscape. When left undisturbed, peatlands grow slowly every year, locking away carbon in low-oxygen water that prevents full decomposition. But when people drain and dry peatlands for agriculture, they can become “carbon bombs,” rapidly releasing massive amounts of planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The burning of huge peat areas in Indonesia in recent years has covered the country in smoke and made it one of the world’s worst carbon emitters from land use change. A new study, published in Environmental Research Letters, reveals that peatlands in Colombia — poorly known before now — are widespread and carbon-dense, making the country the site of South America’s largest known reserves, after Peru. Carried out with painstaking ground-truthing amid a fluctuating security situation, the study highlights the need to understand and conserve these…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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