In a healthy bog, the moss sucks in carbon from the air as it grows. When it dies it doesn't rot because the ground is so wet. It becomes peat, with the carbon locked away for thousands of years.
But on Holcombe moor, overgrazing by sheep and 150 years of air pollution has destroyed the fragile moss blanket, exposing the peat.
Maddi Naish, rural surveyor at the National Trust, said peatlands are"superheroes" when it comes to storing carbon. "We're just a stone's throw from a major city so it's incredible to think we live alongside a habitat that is rarer than rainforest globally, but which contributes so significantly to tackling climate change."It stores three billion tonnes of carbon, more than all the forests of the UK, Germany and France put together.
But much of it has been damaged by human activity so it's pumping the equivalent of 20 million tonnes of carbon back into the atmosphere every year - 4% of the UK's annual emissions.
Belgique Dernières Nouvelles, Belgique Actualités
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