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Blanket bog or blanket mire, also known as featherbed bog, is an area of peatland, forming where there is a climate of high and a low level of evapotranspiration, allowing peat to develop not only in wet hollows but over large expanses of undulating ground.Gorham, E. (1957). The development of peatlands. Quarterly Review of Biology, 32, 145–66.Keddy, P.A. (2010). Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. The blanketing of the ground with a variable depth of peat gives the habitat type its name.
The current distribution of blanket bogs globally remains unknown but they are found extensively throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Well-studied examples are found in Ireland and Scotland, but vast areas of tundra also qualify as blanket bogs. In Europe, the southernmost edge of rangeChico et al., (2019). "Identification and classification of unmapped blanket bogs in the Cordillera Cantábrica, northern Spain". Mires and Peat, 24(2), 1-12 of this habitat has been recently mapped in the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain.
In the Southern Hemisphere, they are less well-developed due to the relatively low of the main land areas, though similar environments are reported in Patagonia,Arroyo, M.T.K., P. Mihoc, P. Pliscoff and M. Arroyo-Kalin. (2005). "The Magellanic moorland". P. 424-445 in L.H. Fraser and P.A. Keddy (eds.). The World's Largest Wetlands: Ecology and Conservation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. the Falkland Islands and New Zealand. The blanket bogs known as 'featherbeds' on subantarctic Macquarie Island occur on raised ; they may be up to deep, tremble or quake when walked on and can be hazardous to cross. It is doubtful whether the extremely impoverished flora of Antarctica is sufficiently well developed to be considered as blanket bogs.
In some areas of Europe, the spread of blanket bogs is traced to deforestation by prehistoric cultures.Moore, P. D. (1973). "The influence of prehistoric cultures upon the initiation and spread of blanket bog in upland Wales". Nature, 241, 350–353.
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