Introduction

History

During the early 1890’s, Governor W.F. Todd was the first to attempt to develop a commercial peat extraction operation when he built a processing plant at Spruce Lake, east of Saint John (Musquash Bog - Peatland 615). This is the oldest documented commercial peat extraction activity in New Brunswick. The Spruce Lake plant burned down in 1895 and Todd moved to a site north of St. Stephen (Todd Bog – Peatland 645) where, for a few years, a small experimental plant was constructed for dewatering the peat by means of a mechanical press.

Before World War II, most of thesphagnum moss peat used in North America came from Europe, more particularly from the Scandinavian countries, Netherlands and Germany. Because of the war, traditional sources of peat were interrupted and efforts to find local sources of peat triggered the modern era of peat production in New Brunswick. In 1942, the Fafard Peat Moss Company was the first to begin production. That year, it shipped 8,000 bales of peat by train to the United States from Peatland 530, located near Shippagan. Today more than 13 000 000 bales of peat are extracted annually by the peat industry making New Brunswick the leading peat producer in Canada.

	Archive photo of peat workings, Peatland 530, south of Shippagan.
	Hand cutting and stacking of blocks of peat was the technique used to mine peat in the 1940’s but this was gradually replaced by mechanical block cutting. By the 1960’s, the increasing cost of labour brought about the introduction of vacuum machines to extract the peat.

Description

Peat consists of organic residues that have accumulated under water-saturated and oxygen poor conditions. In New Brunswick, peat is an abundant natural resource of which Sphagnum mosses are the major plant constituents.

Peatland

Sphagnum Moss

The following map shows the distribution of peatlands in New Brunswick. The area covered by peatlands represents 140 000 ha, or 2% of the terrestrial land mass of the Province.

Legislation

Peat is a substance that belongs to the landowner and about 70% of the peatlands with commercial potential are located on Crown lands.

The extraction of peat on Crown lands is administered under the Quarriable Substances Act. The Act provides the Minister of Natural Resources with the authority to manage tenure, exploration and extraction of peat and other quarriable substances on Crown lands.

General Regulation 93-92 details the requirements that must be met to obtain permission to extract peat and other quarriable substances from Crown lands. The Peat Mining Policy  creates a framework to encourage and stimulate the development of secondary processing of peat resources in New Brunswick. It also introduces the principle that abandoned peat mine sites must be reclaimed or restored to their natural peatland functions. For further information on peatlands restoration, please check the following guide .

Usage

Most of the peat produced in the Province is used in horticultural applications as a soil amendment or as a component of growing mixes. Peat moss is a good organic soil conditioner, assisting in loosening clay soils and in raising moisture retention in sandy soils. Peat is also used to manufacture containers for plants and tree seedlings.

Peatland Inventory

From 1975 to 1983, a major field program was undertaken by the Department of Natural Resources. This program led to mapping and sampling of more than 800 peatlands. The quality of this comprehensive geoscientific Peatland Database has greatly contributed to the successful development of the peat industry in New Brunswick.

From the field data, 289 peat thickness (isopach) maps were produced at an original scale of 1:10 000. For 160 of these maps, a companion elevation map is also available. Peat thickness and elevation maps are available in digital non-georeferenced format. Stratigraphic profiles derived from more than 20,000 boreholes illustrate the distribution of peat types and variations in the degree of humification. Database information on each of the 817 peatlands investigated is available in digital format allowing use of more than 600 variables. Summary descriptions are also available for all peatlands and many have associated geochemical data files. Click here for further information on peat data and how to acquire them.