Tver State Technical University, Tver, Russia:

V. V. Panov, Professor, Associate Professor, Doctor of Geographical Sciences, vvpanov61@gmail.com

By the end of the 19^th century, the conditions for the emergence of the peat industry were formed in Russia. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the description of peat deposits gradually becomes systematic. The study of the growth of mires led to the emergence of mire science and peat science, which became the basis for the successful development of the peat industry. Since the mid-1920s, the role of scientific support for the peat industry has changed. Under the conditions of the mobilization economy and the implementation of the sectoral plan, the autonomy of the scientific community and, as a result, its potential is decreasing. Scientific research was complicated by intersectoral competition for funding before the formation in the 40s of the management of the country’s peat resources and reserves. Its development ends with the emergence of a separate geological exploration industry. As a result, the growth in the volume of peat exploration in the 1950s and 1970s significantly outstripped the growth in peat extraction. At the same time, the introduction of innovative exploration methods was limited due to the unjustified reduction in the cost of manual labor. This trend has led to the fact that since the mid- 70s. the development of geology and exploration of peat deposits did not have an actual impact on the industry. There were no incentives to test new exploration methods. Over the past decades, the volume of geological exploration work has been sharply reduced. The main emphasis is shifted to the study of the role of peat deposits in the global carbon balance and the impact on climate. The change in the vector ofthe use of mires from exploitation to their conservation led to the return of the study of the mechanisms of the functioning of mires, which was typical for the first quarter of the 20^th century.

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