What Are Wetlands and Why Should We Care?

Lately, there’s been a lot of buzz about wetlands. These areas are often highlighted as vital for boosting the resilience of both rural hamlets and urban neighborhoods against the impacts of climate change.

But do we really understand what wetlands are? Many of us might picture them as places we’ve spent much of our lives trying to avoid—think swamps, bogs, marshes, and fens. What’s so important about preserving these muddy fields notorious for clouds of voracious mosquitoes?

While you might not choose a wetland as the ideal spot for an afternoon picnic, it’s crucial to grasp their critical role in our ecosystem. Once you understand their importance, terms like “morass,” “mire,” or “quagmire” will take on a new, more respectful meaning.

Wetlands Are Everywhere

A wetland is an area where water covers the soil or stands near the surface for much of the year. Picture fields of reedy grasses in a soggy bog or red maples rising majestically from wet, mucky earth.

Wetlands fall into two general types: coastal/tidal wetlands and inland/non-tidal wetlands. Coastal wetlands, often saltwater marshes, are located along inlets near the sea and include estuaries, mangroves, lagoons, and coral reefs. Inland wetlands are freshwater-fed by streams and include marshes, peatlands, ponds, lakes, rivers, floodplains, swamps, and fens.

In New England, examples include the Great Marsh—a 25,500-acre salt marsh stretching from Cape Ann in northeastern Massachusetts to New Hampshire’s southeastern coast—and the LaPlatte River Marsh in Vermont. Maine’s Acadia Park also boasts a significant portion of wetlands. Cape Cod’s estuaries are another example, where saltwater from the ocean mixes with freshwater ponds. Connecticut and Rhode Island have their wetlands, too.

Surprisingly, wetlands are found not only in rural areas but also in urban ones. For instance, the Back Bay Fens in Boston was once a saltwater marsh that landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted transformed into a meandering park with a freshwater stream by damming the Charles River.

The Importance of Wetlands: Biodiversity, Resilience, Carbon Sinks

Wetlands are garnering so much attention these days for specific reasons. They are our most important tool against climate change, but we’re losing them fast. They are rich in biodiversity, home to a wide variety of plants and animals, and act as giant absorbent sponges soaking up numerous human-made ills.

After the violent downpours we’ve been experiencing more frequently due to climate change, wetlands can gracefully accept any water overflowing riverbanks and coastlines. Floodplains—the flat areas surrounding rivers or streams—serve as natural “holding tanks” for deluges of water, diverting it away from populated areas. In coastal regions, the vegetation in wetlands absorbs the energy of waves, protecting inland areas from erosion and wave damage.

Another critical function of wetlands is their ability to store carbon from our air. According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, wetlands in the continental United States store 13.5 billion metric tons of carbon. When wetlands are lost, so are these “carbon sinks,” and the carbon that would otherwise be buried gets released into the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change, accelerating global warming, leading to more extreme storms, and perpetuating a destructive cycle.

Wetlands Are Drying Up

Here lies the problem. Wetlands are home to 40% of the world’s plant and animal species and 30% of known fish species. They provide safe places for water to flow after storms and absorb carbon from our polluted air. Yet, despite these invaluable services, they’re disappearing.

Since 2009, the rate of wetland loss has accelerated by 50%. Annually, about 80,000 acres of coastal wetlands are lost. Between 2009 and 2019, the disappearance of all wetlands equaled the land area of Rhode Island. Climate change, urbanization, and changing agricultural practices are driving these losses.

As we lose wetlands, we lose more plants and animals. Between 1970 and 2014, wetland populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles fell by 60%. Each loss destabilizes the entire ecosystem, causing a chain reaction that ultimately impacts us all.

For all these reasons, the importance of wetlands has been widely recognized. Organizations like the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) are fighting hard to protect the wetlands that remain.

It’s clearer than ever that we need to safeguard these natural areas. Otherwise, we risk finding ourselves in an entirely different kind of quagmire.

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What are Wetlands? Why Should We Care?