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Raised peatlands, or bogs, are recognized as exceptionally carbon-dense terrestrial ecosystems in which peat accumulates into convex shapes that rise above their boundaries. Because of this convexity, bogs are vulnerable to artificial drainage, and mapping them is important to evaluate whether and how to protect or restore their carbon stocks. Recently, we showed that hydrological constraints create a pattern in the morphology of bogs that holds under a broad range of conditions, as illustrated by eight examples of bogs from northern, through tropical and further to southern latitudes. Specifically, we found that if bog surface elevation, mean water table elevation and transmissivity are related to one another in similar ways across a bog, the relationships among these variables define a bog-specific monotonic function that generates the bog morphology from a solution to Poisson’s equation. This pattern is like a …