Mystery Burning Ground Found By Jogger
(PresidentialWire) – After a Reddit user from the UK posted a video of smoke coming from the forest floor in Blidworth Woods in Nottinghamshire, Newsweek contacted the user to describe the scene.
Who is the Reddit user? Newsweek didn’t give a name or say if the user was a man or a woman. Instead, the user is simply described by the Reddit screen name u/TomakaTom.
TomakaTom was jogging in the area when he/she(?) happened across an area where the ground was smoking but there was no fire.
According to Newsweek, some other Redditers suggested that the smoking ground was caused by peat, the thick organic soil formed from plant decomposition in low oxygen conditions.
Newsweek then followed up with some geologists who explained how peat is formed and the dangers of peat fires.
Richard Lindsay from the University of East London told Newsweek normal decomposition of plant matter is fueled by oxygen. But waterlogged material uses up the little oxygen in the water which leaves slow anaerobic decomposition that can’t keep up with the accumulated dead plant matter. This decomposition can go on for thousands of years.
Peatland, like bogs and mires, is only about 3 percent of all land area but it stores up to 550 gigatons of carbon, or about 42 percent of all carbon found in soil.
When peat is dry, it can catch fire.
According to Simon Lewis, a plant ecologist from University College London, dry peat has been used as a source of fuel for millennia in Ireland and other parts of the world.
Lewis said peat fires can spread below the surface, burning for months. They can be dangerous to native plants and wildlife both for their long-burning periods and the effects the fires have on the soil.
Lewis cited Indonesia, where peat fires have been so bad over the years that the smoke stops flights and sends “millions of people indoors.”
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