Swamps And Wetlands Can Help Decrease Carbon Emission; Stops Climate Change

By Maria Slither - 17 Feb '15 13:24PM

Researchers from Deakin's Centre for Integrative Ecology within the School of Life and Environmental Sciences in Australia are now investigating the potential of swamps and wetlands in acting as 'carbon sinks' that will absorb carbon emission in the atmosphere and thus can help in alleviating climate change.

The first of its kind, the study which is led by International expert on freshwater and estuarine ecology Dr Rebecca Lester, aims at making the study more scientific by quantifying the amount of carbon stocks in south-west Victorian wetlands, Phys.org reported.

Also, the researchers want to find out if the increase of wetlands or the restoration of some wetlands that have dried up for sometime will contribute to the increase of carbon stocks.

As cited by ABC News Australia, Dr. Lester said, "We know from those initial studies that the potential for carbon to be stored in these systems is huge. Wetlands can store approximately 50 times as much carbon as quite high carbon sequestration ecosystems such as tropical rainforests. But we need to do a little more research to actually bed down some of those numbers."

The study is said to be internationally-funded and will become Australia's contribution for the worldwide campaign in stopping climate change. It is expected to take at least two years of data gathering and will include wetlands in New South Wales.

As to why the researchers chose wetlands, Dr. Lester said that the organic matter and sediments deposited at the bottom of wetlands are slow to decompose and will act as 'carbon sinks.'

"Our preliminary studies suggest that wetlands can sequester up to 33 per cent of the carbon in terrestrial soils, yet they only take up about 4 per cent of the earth's land surface," the scientist said.

According to Business Standard, wetlands account for 10 percent of the overall Earth's land area. They are considered seasonal as they dried up in some seasons. Aside from acting as carbon sinks, wetlands have been habitats of among plants and animals which derive food and nourishment from surface water.