Extended Data Fig. 1: Inferring morphology of bogs with ditching.
From: A unified explanation for the morphology of raised peatlands
Analysis of a bog cut by a ditch in Lost River peatland, Minnesota. Bog boundaries, lidar-derived surface elevations and approximations to bog morphology obtained by transforming the solution to Poisson’s equation to bog-surface elevations as in Fig. 1. Top, analysis of peatland boundary, ignoring ditch. If the ditch is ignored, the rank correlation between surface elevations and Poisson elevations is lower (0.98) because the assumptions underlying our approach are not valid in the ditch, in which open-channel flow occurs. Bottom, analysis of a subdomain that excludes the ditch, showing excellent agreement with the lidar topography (ρ = 0.99). The correlation coefficient is also improved (0.98 versus 0.96), despite the smaller total relief within the subdomain boundary (2.45 m versus 4.21 m) relative to microtopographic relief (about 0.3 m). Satellite images: Google, Landsat/Copernicus.
