CongoPeat was a five-year research programme led by Professor Simon Lewis of the University of Leeds and funded by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant NE/R016860/1. It investigated the newly discovered peatlands of the central Congo Basin, the largest known tropical peatland complex in the world. Spanning 145,500 km² and storing an estimated 30 billion tonnes of carbon, these peatlands play a globally significant role in climate regulation and biodiversity conservation.

The project brought together researchers from six UK universities and five Congolese organisations to improve understanding of the peatlands’ past development, current condition, and future vulnerability to environmental change and human activities. Data outputs from the programme support research on the past, present, and future of the Congo Basin peatlands and provide an evidence base for conservation, sustainable management, and policy-making in the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Data are archived with the Centre for Environmental Data analysis and the Environmental Information Data Centre.