- Location
- Isle of Skye
How does grazing promote peat growth?
Because animals will graze everything that isn't moss. The moss becomes dominant, once the moss is holding enough water, anaerobic conditions cause the peat to be formed and most soil life to die, the soil gets progressively worse as less plants can tolerate the wet acidic conditions.
If anything does manage to grow, the grazers eat it, without grazing animals heather and also tree seeds germinate very easily in wet moss, they grow well without grass competing for nutrients and will start to aerate the ground again through root action, but also drop leaves, thus feeding the soil and surely balancing the PH.
Moss grows on everything in our humid climate, it doesn't need much. If the moss didn't grow so easily (which it doesn't in drier hotter or colder climates) then the soil would just erode in the absence of ground cover and plant roots.
Well that's my perception of it anyway.