One of the many highlights of last week’s PeatNet conference, for me, was the introduction of WikiPEATia – a new platform built at CSRC at the University of New Hampshire. WikiPEATia uses a Google Earth interface to display spatial data on peatland coverage, basal dates, and climate.
The project aims to bring together peatland datasets through crowdsourcing, so that they can be shared by a global community of researchers. The project is still at an early stage, with coverage focussed on the northern hemisphere, but this is set to change with time as more peatland researchers become aware of the project and submit their data. I’m hopeful that one of the outcomes of projects such as this one will be greater consensus within the peatland science community concerning, for example, what we define as a peatland.