By Fred Pearce – Yale Environment 360 Blog – September 28, 2011

The draining and burning of peat bogs is a major global source of CO2 emissions. Now, a pilot project in Russia - where wildfires burned vast areas of dried-out bogs last summer - is looking to re-flood and restore tens of thousands of acres to their natural state. Wild fires that swept across Russia during the record heat wave last summer wrecked crops, triggered a global surge in wheat prices, caused pitch-black smogs that killed thousands of people and - though not much noted at the time - poured huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The gas came mainly from burning peat in wide areas of drained bogs around Moscow. The world had seen nothing like it since peat bogs burned in Indonesia in 1998, shrouding neighboring countries in smoke for weeks. The Moscow fires were a stark reminder that peat bogs are the third greatest source of CO2 emissions - after burning fossil fuels and deforestation. For full blog post, click here. To visit the Yale blog, click here.