Mystical（神秘的）, eerie, sometimes even menacing（威胁的）. Bogs（沼泽） are seen as dark places. They are often the setting for murder mysteries or spooky tales. Humans have been decimating bogs for centuries with perilous consequences. We've absolutely turned ecosystems from sinks of carbon, the sources of carbon. And so that's going to really exacerbate（恶化） potentially climate change.

  The unique ecosystems store vast amounts of carbon, but their potential has been overlooked（忽略） for quite some time. These lands are like lungs of the world. We could say that these are webs of life. And these webs of life are under threat. But new methods could save the world's peat（泥煤） lands as well as our climate. Strips（剥） of green in rural Germany.

  Something is growing here that could help rescue bogs. Most of Germany's wetlands have been drained（排水） and are unrecognizable（未被承认的）. And Greta Gaudig and Matthias Creitz want to show what's been lost and how to get it back. That was quicker（快的） than I thought. They regularly take samples with the probe（探针）. Lower down it looks good, but everything above where it's dry is lost.

  When a peat bog is drained, it begins to decompose（分解）. You can see that in the sample. In the upper layer where it's so dark, there's lots of decomposition. This decomposition worries the ecologist. Peat is made up of dead plants, which sunk into shallow, slightly acidic（ 酸的） water. This oxygen-poor environment doesn't allow the debris（碎片） to decompose（分解） and the carbon stays put.

  But draining exposes the layers to oxygen, which starts decomposition and binds（捆绑） it to the element. It is then released as carbon dioxide. Peat lands are like polymoths. They can do so much. Their biodiversity（生物多样性） alone is very special and they are major carbon sinks. That's why it's so important that we protect peat lands and not just living ones, but also the ones we drained.

  Greta Gaudig has been fighting for peat lands for 20 years. She focuses on former bogs, which she not only studies, but also works（使工作） to restore through rewetting. But it can only work if the farmers who live off the land agree. Germany has around 1.8 million hectares（公顷） of peat（泥煤） land, an area roughly the size of Saxony. 98% has already been drained, mostly to make way for agriculture. Draining is a climate disaster because it makes carbon sources out of ancient carbon sinks.

  Peat lands now contribute about 7% of Germany's CO2 emissions. By comparison, national air traffic contributes just 0.15%, almost 50 times less. Greta Gaudig wants to turn these climate killers back into climate saviours, together with local farmers. A difficult and muddy task. She and her team are researching how crops could be produced on wetlands for the Greisfold Meyers Centre. Did you find it, Kino?

  Yes, 262. They find sphagnum moss at this measuring station. Moss may seem underwhelming, but these starry green plants could help save the planet, because they're incredibly useful for what she calls "paludiculture". That comes from "palus", which is Latin for "swamp（沼泽）" or "marsh（湿地）", so "agriculture" on wet bog lands or swamps. Greta Gaudig studied biology and was intrigued（用诡计取得） by these mosses even as a student. The usefulness（有用） was little known at the time. She's currently working on an instruction manual for "paludiculture".

  I don't want to do science, that just ends up in a drawer. I want it to be used, and this is a whole new kind of agriculture. A system that could revolutionise how we grow plants. Pete is now used everywhere, in soil for home gardening or potted plants, by professional garden centres and for commercial vegetable fields. But our hunger for Pete is hurting our wetlands. She wants to replace the Pete used in plant soil with bog moss. But growing moss first needs to become more efficient.

  The team is testing machines for maintaining moss fields. It's precise work because they only want to remove the upper layer and preserve the precious bog below. This sample is for the lab. This "paludiculture" system was born at the Greifswald Meyer Centre, which is where Greta Gaudig examines her favourite plant. This is the Pete Moss biomass. We want to dry it first and then weigh it so that we know how much a farmer could harvest（收割）.

  Spagnum mosses have enormous potential for use in plant soil. Dog mosses benefit the climate twice. First, they can replace Pete in horticulture（园艺）, a renewable（能再生的） material replacing a fossil fuel. That's the first one. And secondly, peatlands would be rewetted to cultivate（培养） the mosses, which would mean that the high emissions that currently come from drained peatlands would stop. The lab tests go well, as do the first field trials.

  She's confident that they can develop a system for mass production. This is where the ecological（ 生态的） economist Sabina Wichmann comes in. Her job at Germany's most important peatland research centre is to ensure that projects have a solid economic foundation. New areas will be needed to grow bog moss, and we're talking about hundreds or thousands of hectares. We'll need to convince farmers and landowners（地主）, plus the investment costs are high. Which is why the next hurdle for the researchers is finding buyers.

  Perhaps they can convince a garden centre. Further north, Finland has Europe's most extensive peatlands. They're home to rare animal and plant species. But these biotopes also died as they were stripped mined for fuel or drained to make room for forest plantations. Tero Mustanand has been working to mitigate（减轻） the damage. He's a climate scientist and activist（积极分子）.

  And as a globally respected scholar, he also contributed to the UN climate change report. He has an especially strong bond with one peatland in his native Finland. It almost feels like Linonsoi is kind of a person. You see some kind of a presence here. For example, this wood piece that I'm now looking at may potentially be two, three thousand years old. I often want to think that peatlands are the memory of Finland.

  Without Mustanand and his non-profit snow change, Linonsoi wouldn't exist as it does today.