We need integrated management of wetlands and coastal protections on a national and international scale.
— Tom Spencer
Using a new model to measure the possible effects on wetlands on a global scale, the researchers, from the UK and Germany, modelled the impacts of different scenarios for sea level rise to the end of this century.
They found that even in the event of ‘low’ global sea level rise (around 30 centimetres), much of the world’s wetlands, particularly on ‘micro-tidal’ coasts, are vulnerable. Around 70 percent of the world’s wetlands are found on micro-tidal coasts, where the range between high spring tide and low spring tide is less than two metres, such as in the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico. The results are reported in the journal Global and Planetary Change.
Across the globe, wetlands cover more than 750,000 square kilometres, an area more than three times the size of the UK. Coastal wetlands, which include salt marshes, mangrove forests and mud flats, protect against erosion and flooding, provide habitat and food for wildlife, improve water quality, support commercial fisheries, and can store large amounts of carbon.
“Wetlands are particularly sensitive to environmental change, and are being lost worldwide due to human activity, such as conversion to agriculture, and through the effects of climate change, including rising sea levels,” said Dr Tom Spencer of the University of Cambridge’s Department of Geography, the paper’s lead author.
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Image: Wetlands in Cape May, New Jersey, USA
Credit: By Anthony Bley, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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