NAMED after the Old Norse word floi meaning 'wet or marshy land', the Flow Country is a vast rolling expanse of peatland and wetland covering some 1,500 square miles of Caithness and Sutherland, Scotland's most northerly counties. The largest stretch of blanket bog in Europe, the Flow Country is an area of deep peat, a type of peatland formed over thousands of years as mosses grow, die and accumulate in layers, eventually forming peat.
When peatlands are damaged or degraded due to drainage or peat extraction, stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere, thereby contributing to greenhouse-gas emissions. Peatlands such as the Flow Country act as a carbon sink, trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Now, thanks to a series of dedicated peatland-restoration projects, the Flow Country has embarked on a transformative journey that will see precious peatland restored, the region's delicate ecosystem rejuvenated and carbon loss halted, thereby mitigating the effects of climate change.
As part of the UK Peatland Programme, which aims to restore two million hectares (almost five million acres) of deteriorated peatland by 2040, the Scottish government is supporting landowners' restoration efforts with $250 million of funding via the Peatland Action Scheme. Landowners can also sign up to the Peatland Code, which allows them to create carbon units that can potentially be sold for carbon offsetting. It's small wonder, then, that the value of Scottish land and estates endowed with substantial 'natural capital' assets has sky-rocketed in recent years.
Esta historia es de la edición September 13, 2023 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición September 13, 2023 de Country Life UK.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
