Approaches to estimating humification indicators for peat

Degree of decomposition is an important property of the organic matter in soils and other deposits which contain fossil carbon. It describes the intensity of transformation, or the humification degree (HD), of the original living organic matter. In this article, approaches to the determination of HD are thoroughly described and 14C dated peat columns extracted from several bogs in Latvia are investigated and compared. A new humification indicator is suggested, namely the quantity of humic substances as a fraction of the total amount of organic matter in the peat.