Scotland’s Flow Country

What happened

The image above, captured by the OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 8 , is centered on blanket bogs in the Scottish Highlands, home to the largest such ecosystem in Europe. Blanket bogs in the Scottish Highlands store vast amounts of carbon.

Yet, to ecologists, the seemingly desolate areas are nothing short of extraordinary. The bogs store tremendous quantities of carbon .

That’s because their soils are so waterlogged that microbes cannot fully break down dead plant material, a process that would otherwise release carbon dioxide. Instead, partially decayed plant matter accumulates into thick layers of spongy, crumbly, carbon-rich material called peat .

The unusual ecosystems, also called blanket mires and featherbed bogs, only occur in places with abundant rainfall, poor drainage, and low levels of evapotranspiration . Earth Observatory Scotland’s Flow Country Image of the Day for November 12, 2026 Blanket bogs in the Scottish Highlands store vast amounts of carbon.

View more Images of the Day: Nov 11, 2026 Instruments: Landsat 8 — OLI Topics: Land Cover Surface Water Vegetation Compared to ecosystems in many other parts of the world, the blanket bogs of the Flow Country in northern Scotland are unassuming—soggy, treeless landscapes dominated by hummocky mosses, grasses, and heathers. These types of bogs cover just 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) globally, less than one-tenth of one percent of Earth’s land surface.

This peatland is also the first of its type to be inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site . The peat bogs of northern Scotland, home to more than 30 species of sphagnum moss , are spread across some 1,900 square kilometers (730 square miles) of the country’s Highlands region.