Wetlands across the globe are in danger of drowning from rising seas.
Wetlands across the globe are in danger of drowning from rising seas. But for decades, scientists held out hope that another aspect of climate change—rising carbon dioxide (CO2)—could trigger extra plant growth, enabling coastal wetlands to grow fast enough to outpace sea-level rise. That helpful side effect is disappearing, they discovered in a new study published May 18.
“Too much water is a stress, an environmental stress, for plant response to high CO2,” said Chunwu Zhu, lead author of the report in Science Advances. Zhu, a biologist with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, conducted the study while on a fellowship with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC).
Conserving wetlands is critical both to fight climate change and adapt to it. Besides providing habitat, wetlands sequester massive amounts of carbon and protect people from some of climate change’s more extreme effects, such as hurricanes and typhoons.
“Although they occupy just a fraction of the Earth’s surface, they provide outsized ecosystem services, which are basically benefits to people,” said corresponding author Pat Megonigal, a biogeochemist with SERC. “And we value them partly because, by protecting a relatively small part of the Earth, we can have big positive impacts on the environment.”
Read more at: Smithsonian University
Adam Langley, an ecologist at Villanova, takes soil elevation measurements at the Global Change Research Wetland. (Photo Credit: Mikayla Manyin)
