Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the these.

Imagine semi-decayed plant material accumulating for thousands of years under waterlogged conditions. This thick and condensed layer of soil that packs a large amount of organic carbon is called peat. When this carbon-rich soil is deprived of water and gets exposed to air, it decomposes rapidly and releases all the carbon back into the atmosphere, adding to the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change.

So, protecting peatlands becomes a nature-based solution to reduce the effect of or mitigate climate change. This ecosystem also helps in climate change adaptation by controlling floods, improving water availability by holding and releasing water, purifying water, and providing habitat for a variety of biodiversity.

Draining and clearing peatlands to make them suitable for agriculture and other development activities has been the main threat to the ecosystem. Drained peatlands are also vulnerable to long-lasting fires, which can multiply emissions and also release toxic haze. For instance, fire in the carbon-rich peatlands of Indonesia this year reflected double the carbon of Amazon fires.

“Peatlands are like mines. First, you need to know where they are laid. And then you can take that into account in land-use planning. If you treat them wrongly, which is very easy, you blow up everything,” said Hans Joosten, professor of Peatland Studies at the University of Greifswald in Germany. “Hence, mapping exercise is important, and it becomes more necessary as land use becomes more intensive.”

Peatlands have been found in 180 countries ___(A)___, and they occur extensively in the northern and tropical zones. But their exact location and status remain relatively unknown in most countries.

Ritesh Kumar, director at Wetlands International South Asia, said, “In India, peatlands have been recorded in Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and north Sikkim. Some parts of the Western Ghats have peat too. A lot of our deltas and mangroves have the propensity to develop into peat. But there have been no systematic efforts to map them.”

Since they weren’t documented earlier, we don’t know what’s lost. And as land conversion for agriculture, grazing, housing and tourism threatens peatlands across the country, Kumar said that the ecosystem needs a lot more research. “We are trying to accumulate information and evidence and develop a peat map of India,” he said.

The Greifswald Mire Centre maintains a Global Peatland Database that maps the location, extent, and status of these ecosystems across the world with inputs from existing information, field research, and other maps and studies. But Joosten claims that despite being one of the reliable resources available, their map needs more work. “There is no remote sensing technology that can look inside the soil. You really have to dig deep in the mud and get dirty,” remarked Joosten.

Joosten also feels that the neglect is because peatlands comparatively occupy a smaller part of the earth’s surface – 3% – and are usually not visible, tucked in forests or mangroves. “Also, there’s a lot of negative connotations to the words related to peatlands…swamped, bogged down, mired…so people tend to undervalue them,” he said.

Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow. Certain words are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the these.

Imagine semi-decayed plant material accumulating for thousands of years under waterlogged conditions. This thick and condensed layer of soil that packs a large amount of organic carbon is called peat. When this carbon-rich soil is deprived of water and gets exposed to air, it decomposes rapidly and releases all the carbon back into the atmosphere, adding to the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change.

So, protecting peatlands becomes a nature-based solution to reduce the effect of or mitigate climate change. This ecosystem also helps in climate change adaptation by controlling floods, improving water availability by holding and releasing water, purifying water, and providing habitat for a variety of biodiversity.

Draining and clearing peatlands to make them suitable for agriculture and other development activities has been the main threat to the ecosystem. Drained peatlands are also vulnerable to long-lasting fires, which can multiply emissions and also release toxic haze. For instance, fire in the carbon-rich peatlands of Indonesia this year reflected double the carbon of Amazon fires.

“Peatlands are like mines. First, you need to know where they are laid. And then you can take that into account in land-use planning. If you treat them wrongly, which is very easy, you blow up everything,” said Hans Joosten, professor of Peatland Studies at the University of Greifswald in Germany. “Hence, mapping exercise is important, and it becomes more necessary as land use becomes more intensive.”

Peatlands have been found in 180 countries ___(A)___, and they occur extensively in the northern and tropical zones. But their exact location and status remain relatively unknown in most countries.

Ritesh Kumar, director at Wetlands International South Asia, said, “In India, peatlands have been recorded in Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and north Sikkim. Some parts of the Western Ghats have peat too. A lot of our deltas and mangroves have the propensity to develop into peat. But there have been no systematic efforts to map them.”

Since they weren’t documented earlier, we don’t know what’s lost. And as land conversion for agriculture, grazing, housing and tourism threatens peatlands across the country, Kumar said that the ecosystem needs a lot more research. “We are trying to accumulate information and evidence and develop a peat map of India,” he said.

The Greifswald Mire Centre maintains a Global Peatland Database that maps the location, extent, and status of these ecosystems across the world with inputs from existing information, field research, and other maps and studies. But Joosten claims that despite being one of the reliable resources available, their map needs more work. “There is no remote sensing technology that can look inside the soil. You really have to dig deep in the mud and get dirty,” remarked Joosten.

Joosten also feels that the neglect is because peatlands comparatively occupy a smaller part of the earth’s surface – 3% – and are usually not visible, tucked in forests or mangroves. “Also, there’s a lot of negative connotations to the words related to peatlands…swamped, bogged down, mired…so people tend to undervalue them,” he said.