Kidneys of the Earth, a natural weapon in the fight against climate change, the last line of defense of cities against floods, hidden places and home to a huge number of plant and animal species...
All that, and much more, represent wetlands.
"A swamp is a natural formation on land, extraordinarily rich in fresh or salt water, which can cover the soil or is heavily saturated with it for most of the year," the book says. Hydrology professors Dušan Dukić and Ljiljana Gavrilović.
Their total area on Earth is 2.682.600 square kilometers.
U the report from the Convention on Wetlands held in Dubai - United Arab Emirates, October 2018, it is stated that the life of more than a million people depends on them, while 40 percent of plant and animal species live and grow in wetlands.
Here are 10 interesting facts about wetlands - mystical and sometimes spooky hydrological objects, but useful to man and nature as well.
- The flora and fauna hidden in the swamps of Serbia
- In photos: Forest fires ravaged the world's largest swamp
- Planting trees - the world's biggest undertakings
Wetlands are the kidneys of the Earth
Wetlands, including wetlands, are also called the Earth's kidneys because they function as filters - they absorb pesticides and chemicals and remove harmful waste from the water.
Wetlands they can retain pollutants such as phosphorus and heavy metals in their own soil, as well as convert nitrogen into a form that is easier for plants to take in, as well as physically and chemically break down bacteria.
For example, the Nakivubo swamp in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, serves as a purifier for city sewage and industrial waste.
The monetary value of these water filtration services is estimated at $1,8 million annually.
A similar system exists and in the wetlands of East Calcutta in India, where purified water is used in agriculture and for fish ponds, providing livelihoods for about 50.000 people.
Types of wetlands
There are three main types of wetlands according to the conditions of water and mineral nutrition, vegetation characteristics and altitude position in relation to the surrounding terrain.
- Eutrophic (grassy) wetlands they are located on riverine, floodplain land, and since they are lower than the surrounding terrain, they are also called lowland swamps. They are formed when lakes or rivers become overgrown with sedges, reeds and green moss. In addition to precipitation, they are also fed by underground and river flood waters that bring mineral salts, which enables the development of grass vegetation.
- Mesotrophic (forest) swamps represent a transitional type where grass vegetation is suppressed by stunted trees, such as dwarf pine and birch.
- Oligotrophic (mossy) swamps they arise from forests by further accumulation of peat. They are not fed by groundwater, but are replaced by precipitation. The amount of mineral matter is reduced to such an extent that only plants that are satisfied with the minimum feeding conditions remain in it.
Source: university textbook Hydrology - Dušan Dukić and Ljiljana Gavrilović
Pantanal
It's the Pantanal the largest tropical wetland which covers about 170.000 square kilometers.
Most of it is in Brazil, but it also reaches the territory of Bolivia and Paraguay.
During the summer rainy season, from November to March, the Paraguay River and its tributaries overflow their banks and the blue surrounding plains, forming shallow lakes and a large number of wetlands.
In the winter period, from April to September, the rivers recede, but only a small part of the plain dries up.
At the end of the 20th century, gold mining and agricultural activities in this area, but also the presence of poachers and tourists, obese were to threaten the complex ecological system of the swamp, in which they failed.
Since 2000, four areas of the Pantanal have been on the UNESCO World Heritage List, while seven years earlier the wetland was also protected by the Ramsar Convention.
Ramsar sites and their day
World Wetlands Day is celebrated on February 2 in commemoration of the signing of the Ramsar Convention on the Protection of Wetlands of International Importance in 1971.
This international document was adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar, on the shores of the Caspian Lake, and its sites are today in more than 171 countries of the world.
The Convention refers to the protection of wetlands, especially as habitats for wetland birds, the Serbian Nature Protection Institute previously told the BBC in Serbian.
Today, there are 11 Ramsar sites in Serbia, and the last such status was given to the Đerdap National Park (NP) at the end of 2020.
"Ramsar sites include wetlands and wetlands that are permanently or seasonally saturated with water," she told BBC in Serbian Snežana Đurđić, professor at the Faculty of Geography in Belgrade.
In addition to swamps, on land there are also ponds, puddles, ponds, lakes and rivers, as well as some coastal and marine areas and others.
The Ramsar sites of Serbia are the Special nature reserves of Obedska bara, Zasavica, Gornje Podunavlje, Koviljsko-Petrovaradinski rit, Slano kopovo, Stari begej - Carska bara, Ludaško jezero, Labudovo okno (part of SRP Deliblatska peščara) and Peštersko polje, as well as the Area of exceptional features - Vlasina.
The total area of Ramsar sites in Serbia is 129.919 hectares.
Plant and animal world
Wetlands are complex ecosystems in which a variety of plant and animal life lives.
Nevertheless, one gets the impression that their real mistresses are the birds, for whom these spaces are home, resting places, wintering grounds, and transit stations.
U Ramsar areas in Serbia, which includes wetlands, is home to about 320 species of birds.
One of these localities is the Zasavica Special Nature Reserve, where 110 of the 216 bird species that have been recorded in this place, a swamp-peat complex near Sremska Mitrovica, nest.
In April 2004, after a hundred years of absence, the European beaver was once again settled in this place, from where it continued to spread. waters of Serbia.
The following year, another 40 individuals of this cute rodent were released into Obedska Bar.
In addition to fish, birds and rodents, wetlands around the world provide refuge for many other animal species - from various types of insects, to reptiles and tadpoles, to ungulates and primates.
Thus, in the Pantanal you can see numerous monkeys, anacondas, tapirs, but also a jaguar, a giant anteater and the largest parrot in the world - the macaw.
Fires that hit the Pantanal, from January to November 2020, destroyed about 30 percent of the living world of the wetland, which is about 17 million individuals.
In the Sundarbans - the largest mangrove forest in the world, in India and Bangladesh and its salt marshes near the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers, the Bengal tiger also lives.
Mangroves are forests with low trees that develop on the muddy shores of tropical swamps, lagoons and bays.
Some capital specimens of animal species also live in swamps, so in April 2019, in a swampy area - the Everglades, in Florida (USA) was found Burmese python more than five meters long.
Peat and economic importance
Peat is formed in swamps - deposits of semi-decayed plant remains, which also have great economic importance.
In some countries, such as Finland and Ireland, it is used as fuel in industry, power plants or for heating in households.
Although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations (UN) does not label it as such, showed is that its emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases with the greenhouse effect are still comparable to fossil fuel emissions.
Peat can reach a thickness of eight to nine meters in bogs formed in hollows, between 50 and 60 degrees north latitude.
Sometimes draining swamps can also be beneficial to humans, because different agricultural and vegetable crops thrive on such soil.
"Draining the swamps in the field of the Irpen River near Kiev in Ukraine, the city got a base to supply the population with vegetables.
"On the site of the former marshes in Colchis, there are now plantations of citrus fruits and other subtropical crops," the book says Hydrology professors Dušan Dukić and Ljiljana Gavrilović.
Thalmatology
The science of wetlands is called thalmatology.
This term is a compound of Greek words - talmatos, translated by swamps, i Logos - science.
It studies wetlands as a part of the Earth's surface and geographical space, but also the ways of their creation, peculiarities of the plant cover of wetlands, hydrological regime and processes of wetland soil formation.
Also, her task is to study the physical processes of moisture movement in wetlands and the processes of moisture exchange between wetlands and the surrounding environment.
Natural dams
As one of the reasons why cities around the world are often flooded due to extreme weather conditions, experts state that wetlands, which serve as a natural defense, are rapidly disappearing.
Wetlands and other wet areas, according to experts, function as a giant sponge that absorbs and stores excess precipitation.
However, a big problem could be that these hydrological objects they disappear three times faster than forests, as well as the fact that 35 percent of them have already disappeared in the period from 1970 to 2015.
Also, the problem is the expansion of cities at the expense of wet areas, which are generally seen as a wasteland that should be used.
An example from the immediate environment is New Belgrade which, starting on April 11, 1948, began to sprout on the marshland.
The secret weapon against climate change
In addition to the many benefits that the Earth and humanity have from wetlands, they can also be an important tool in the fight against climate change.
"Peatlands absorb 30 percent of terrestrial carbon dioxide and mitigate the effects of climate change, which are just some of the services of wetland ecosystems, which are many times greater than, for example, forest ecosystems." stated is Nataša Milojević from WWF Adriatic on the occasion of the International Day of Wetlands, last year.
This happens because wetland plants, instead of decaying and releasing carbon into the atmosphere, are covered in silt and mud when they die.
Scientists claim that such a system could be extremely useful due to sea level rise.
For example, when waves in a coastal area where there is marshland, they wash away higher layers of sediments, which then they bury carbon-rich material and lock it under silt layers.
Salt marshes on the coasts of Australia, China and South America could be of great help in this mission.
Twice as much carbon stored in these wetlands would mean an additional five million tonnes of atmospheric carbon "trapped in the mud" each year - equal to removing more than a million cars from the street.
Distribution
Although they are also found in the tropics, wetlands are formed most rapidly in the temperate climate zone, especially between 50 and 60 degrees north latitude.
In those parts, there is enough moisture and heat, which favors the development of the flora of the wetlands.
The largest wetlands findings in the West Siberian Lowland (Russia), in the Amazon River Basin (South America) and in the lowlands around Hudson Bay (Canada).
The biggest protected wetland in the world, Llanos de Moxos in Bolivia has an area of more than 17 million hectares.
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