Post Provided by JULIA CHERRY, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA
Today is World Wetlands Day, a day to raise awareness about wetlands and the many ecosystem services that they provide. Wetlands are broadly defined as areas saturated or inundated with water for periods long enough to generate anaerobic soils and support water-loving plants. They include bogs, swamps, floodplain forests, marshes and mangroves.
Some may wonder why these habitats deserve their own day of recognition, as wetlands can evoke images of the soggy, unpleasant wild places– the “ghast pools” of Dante’s Divine Comedy or the “waste places” of Beowulf. Unfortunately, these descriptions overshadow the true beauty and value of the world’s diverse wetland ecosystems. For those of us dedicated to researching and enjoying wetlands, these areas are worth appreciating every day of the year for numerous reasons.
In honor of World Wetlands Day, I will make the case for wetlands and highlight an example of a new research tool designed to understand how coastal wetlands may respond to sea-level rise.
Wetland habitats, including (A) a marine-dominated coastal marsh and maritime pine island complex (Grand Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Mississippi, USA), (B) a freshwater floodplain marsh (Hale County, Alabama, USA), (C) a cypress-tupelo swamp (Perry Lakes, Alabama, USA), and (D) a Gulf of Mexico salt marsh (Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana, USA). ©Julia Cherry
