Sphagnum baby. Several of the world's largest wetlands are sphagnum-dominated bogs, including the West Siberian Lowland, the Hudson Bay Lowland and the Mackenzie River Valley. These areas provide habitat for common and rare species. They also store large amounts of carbon, which helps reduce global warming. The U.S. gets up to 80% of sphagnum peat moss it uses from Canada. In Canada, the peat bog mass harvested each year is an estimated 1/60th of the mass that accumulates. About .02% of the 270 million acres (422,000 square miles) of Canadian peat bog are used for peat moss mining. Some efforts are
Plant functional type key parameters are defined, such as fecundity, competitiveness, resorption (rate at which plant decays and returns nutrients to the soil after death), etc.; the value of each parameter is determined or inferred from observable characteristics such as plant height, leaf area, etc. Climatologists and ecologists struggle to determine which minimal set of plant characteristics best model the actual responses of the biosphere in response to climate changes. Plant functional type Plant functional types (PFTs) is a system used by climatologists to classify plants according to their physical, phylogenetic and phenological characteristics as part of an overall effort to develop a