A Bog Area

Finland is bog area. About a third of Finlands land has originally been bog areas. Today about half of the former bog area has been drained. Most of the drained areas have been forests land, all to keep the wood industry stong. Very little has also been used as agricultural land and some for getting peat.

Finland is the only country with such large bog nature ares. There are different types of bogs, the main three types are palsa bogs, aapa bogs, and raised bogs. Aapa bogs are mainly in the central and northern Finland. The surface of aapa bogs is usually lower than its edges. Surface and rain water is collected in them and their biodiveristy is very rich. Some aapa bogs can also be found in Sweden and Russia but not as rich in nature as in Finland. In other countries there are no aapa bogs. The raised bogs in southern Finland had a middle point that is higer than the edges.

Peat is a renewable nature rescourse but as it renews so slowly (in 1 million years), it may nearly be considered as unrenewable. Peat is a result of vegetation composted at bogs and this process is concentrated to the nothern hemisphere of the globe. Finland gets 6% of its electricity from peat. About 30% of the Finnish surface is covered by bogs. The peat industry uses today about 1% of the bog areas. Disadvantages from burning peat is the ash left from it, heavy metals and radioactive substances. Peat is easy to get to burn and this results in fires at bog areas every year. A fire in a bot area is very difficult to put out. Peat production needs large land areas and the ground water is loaded by humus. The advantage with peat is that it is domestic, easy to get and there is pleanty of it.

Torro National Park, Tammela municipal, Häme.