CongoPeat is a 5-year project led by Professor Simon Lewis of the University of Leeds, funded by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). It builds on the recently published first-ever map of a vast peatland in the central Congo Basin (Dargie et al., 2017). Covering 145,500 square kilometres – an area larger than England – it is now recognised as the world’s most extensive tropical peatland.