Video: Wetlands Can Help Save the Planet

by BeanStemin Citations and transcripts, Videoson Posted on

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Transcript

Introduction

  • Oh hi there! Welcome to GroundWork, a series about how each biome contributes in its own way to the stability, biodiversity, and beauty of the planet!
  • I’m Ben Rankin, and today I want to show you why wetlands like these are so important, how they can help stop climate change, and why they’re just plain cool
  • Where I’m standing now is a wetland. And you can tell because there’s land. And it’s wet. But, wetland is an umbrella term, so let’s break it down into the 4 main types of wetlands.

Part 1: Definitions

  • So there are swamps, marshes, fens, and bogs. And those are kind of categorized into subcategories, with “swamps and marshes” and “fens and bogs.”
  • I live in Florida, so we’re going to start with swamps and marshes because… boy do I have easy access to them!
  • Where I’m standing now is Weedon Island Preserve, and so these waters are fed by Tampa Bay, which is part of the Atlantic ocean (in a roundabout way)
  • And now I’m standing a couple hours north at Rainbow River, the water here is fed by a freshwater source– it’s fed by Rainbow springs.
  • Both of these are categorized as swamps and marshes because they’re fed by surface water
  • Surface water is runoff, rivers, lakes, pretty much any water found on the surface, as opposed to water in the ground or rainwater
  • So! We have it narrowed down to swamps and marshes, but how do you tell the difference between the two? Well, swamps are dominated by woody plants, like trees and shrubs, whereas marshes are dominated by grasses and other soft plants — the term for that is “herbaceous plants.”
  • Cool! Before we move on, it’s important to note that even within these sub-types, there are kind of sub-categories of both swamps and marshes. Down here at Weedon Island, the waters are fed by those salty, tidal waters that we talked about earlier. So, coastal ecosystems like this will often be categorized as mangrove forests (also just called “mangroves”) or they’ll be called salt marshes.
  • Back here at rainbow river, this is just gonna be a swamp or a marsh, though it could also be called a freshwater swamp or marsh.
  • Alright, now we can move on to bogs and fens. So bogs and fens are not defined by their source of water — although that is important, and we’ll get to that — but they’re defined by the fact that they are “peatlands.”
  • Peat is basically all the partially decomposed organic matter (mostly from plants) that settles down at the bottom of these wetlands. You see, the soil and water conditions in peatlands really slow down the decomposition process, so when organic matter comes in and settles down, instead of getting broken down, it just builds on top of itself. And that results in meters-thick layers of peat that forms the base of bogs and fens.
  • Ok, so what’s the difference between the two main types of peatlands?
  • Well, here we get back to the source of water being important. Bogs are primarily fed by rainwater, and why that’s important is that rainwater has already been naturally filtered by the water cycle, so it’s pretty lacking in nutrients. And bogs aren’t getting their moisture from any other source — at least not in any significant portion — it’s just that rainwater. So the soil in bogs ends up being pretty low in nutrients.
  • So the soil and water conditions in bogs are also very acidic, and that’s because of the sphagnum mosses that grow on the bottom.
  • Between that, with the high acidity and the low nutrients, it’s hard for a lot of plants to grow here. But when we get to the “biodiversity” section of the video, we’re gonna talk just a bit about some of the cool adaptations plants have undergone to be able to grow here.
  • For now, we’ve gotta move onto our last type of wetlands: fens! Like bogs, fens are peatlands, and they are also fed by rainwater — it’s not like they’re covered by a big ‘ol roof — but the key difference is that they’re also fed by water from the ground.
  • And groundwater is really rich in minerals and nutrients, because it comes from… the ground where all the minerals are. So the main difference is that: even though fens have sphagnum mosses and peat, that minerals and nutrients brought in by groundwater significantly affects what types of plants and animals can live there.
  • Ok, quick recap!
  • Swamps: fed by surface water, dominated by woody plants
  • Marshes: fed by surface water, dominated by herbaceous plants like grasses
  • Bogs: Peatlands, fed by rainwater, high acidity and low nutrients
  • Fens: Peatlands, fed by groundwater, more nutrients, less acidity
  • If you get confused, you can always use this fancy chart I made!
  • Ok! Now we can talk about why they’re so cool!

Part 2: Benefits

  • So there are several ways that wetlands are helpful to us silly little humans. For one thing, they provide food and other resources to local communities and economies.
  • Mangroves especially form a sort of underwater jungle, and that provides a safe habitat and breeding grounds for fish and all sorts of other wildlife. What that means for humans is that wetlands like mangroves make for really good fisheries (Balwan & Kour, 2021; Global Mangrove Alliance, 2022).
  • And that’s especially useful for indigenous peoples who rely on their local wetlands to survive.
  • Second, wetlands kinda act like a sponge: they’re really good at absorbing a lot of water. That’s part of what makes them a great natural solution for anti-erosion– they act as storm and flood buffers, and help protect against sea level rise (Grimm et al., 2024; Hawken, 2021; Macreadie et al., 2021)
  • Third, wetlands greatly improve water quality: Actually, a lot of studies have been done on using wetlands for water filtration because of the way they naturally create drinking water (Balwan & Kour, 2021)!
  • You see, as rivers and runoff flow through a wetland, some of that water is gonna filter down through the bottom, through the the roots, soil, and peat. And when that happens, the roots will absorb a lot of the nutrients and pollutants, and then the sand, soil, and peat at the bottom filter out a lot of the particulates.
  • Remember when I said about 30 seconds ago that wetlands act like a sponge? Well, that can be useful for drinking water as well! Wetlands will absorb a lot of water during wetter seasons and then release it back in the drier seasons to help stabilize the water table.
  • Hi, it’s Ben from the future! We’ll meet soon! I wanted to expand on this a little bit more before moving on, so I found this cool study from Louisiana State University in 2004; and it looked at how much money could be saved by using wetlands for water filtration as compared to traditional, man-made water filtration plants. And the results were really surprising!
  • So this study found that using the wetlands that are already there in Louisana for water filtration could save 1.8 MILLION dollars in up-front costs and then another 72,000 dollars per year (Ko et al., 2004).
  • Even better than that — dumping wastewater into wetlands sounds like a terrible idea. It would pollute the wetlands and be bad for them, right? WRONG!
  • Scientists use a fancy term called “net primary productivity,” or NPP, to describe basically how much plant growth an area produces in a given period of time — and the crazy thing is that it turns out releasing this partially-treated wastewater into wetlands can actually BOOST NPP and help RESTORE the wetlands! Super cool!!
  • So what else to wetlands do? Well, they’re a trove of biodiversity! A lot of the studies and resources I read in researching this video compared them to rain forests. And rain forests are, like, the poster child for biodiversity and rich ecosystems!
  • But wetlands are home to all sorts of different insects, amphibians, mammals, reptiles. Take a look at just what I found on my outings for shooting this video:
  • Welcome back! I plan to make a whole separate video on why biodiversity matters, but until then, just look at this! This is so beautiful! This is so cool! Look at all these guys!
  • Now, there’s one specific class of organism that I want to call out. We mentioned that we’d talk about some of the cool adaptations that some plants have made to be able to live in the harsh soil conditions of bogs.
  • And what I was referring to there was carnivorous plants! Carnivorous plants are so cool! They’re a great example of biodiversity and evolution filling in a niche. Because remember, the soil condition in bogs are really harsh: it’s very acidic and there’s very low nutrients. And that low nutrients thing is actually why carnivorous plants evolved! They evolved to eat insects to get their nutrients because they couldn’t get it from the soil (Pain, 2022)!
  • Some of them literally create a vacuum to suck up their prey. That’s so freaking cool!

Part 3: Carbon sequestration (aka how wetlands can help stop climate change)

  • Alright, now to get into the main point of the video: this is how wetlands can help stop climate change!
  • There’s been a lot of talk in recent years, especially from the tech industry, about “carbon capture” — using machines to suck carbon dioxide out of the air. But the problem is that natural ecosystems… already do that, and they do it better.
  • Plants grow by taking carbon out of the air. They do that, do some fancy biochemistry stuff, and then they use that carbon to build new organic material (Hawken, 2021; Macreadie et al., 2021).
  • Wetlands are especially good at that whole process, and that’s for 2 reasons:
  • First off, wetlands are very productive ecosystems. There’s a lot of plants growing, and they’regrowing fast
  • And second, because wetlands are
  • waterlogged, that water helps literally keep the carbon down just by keeping it trapped in there. But it also slows down the decomposition process that would normally be releasing carbon back into the atmosphere.
  • Ok, now let’s get into some fun numbers to support my thesis
  • So we said that wetlands are both productive, and they store carbon, right? That maps perfectly onto the 2 key metrics we need to look at: carbon sequestration and carbon storage
  • Carbon sequestration is how much carbon a system removes from the atmosphere over time, and carbon storage is how much carbon is stored in a system in a given patch of land. Sequestration is the faucet, storage is the bucket
  • Now, I was doing research and writing for this video, and I know that this section, just by nature, is going to have a lot of numbers thrown at you. So I was thinking about to make it interesting and how to keep up with the numbers when I realized I can use a scientists favorite tool: A TIER LIST!
  • Alright, let’s get started with our poor man’s tier list!
  • Before we start, I want to point out this reference card here in the corner. These are fact sheets that are basically themed as trading cards! So this reference card will help you decode what these numbers actually mean. They are actually fact checked and… real numbers. But we’re just gonna treat them as trading card “scores” so that we can compare them.
  • We’ll start with tropical forests, start to give a frame of reference. We’ve got a solid starting area store of 20, that’s 20 million sq km globally. That is… a lot. You can see, especially as compared to the other ones.
  • Their carbon storage score is 21.4 and the sequestrations core is 60. Those are really solid numbers, nothing to bat an eye at. You can see that the global scores, so 428 for carbon storage and 1200 for carbons sequestraion. These are really high, but a lot of that is boosted by that high area score. They take up a lot of area, so they have high global scores even regardless of their per-sq m scores.
  • Because that’s a frame of reference — it’s really solid, but we’re going to leave it at B because we’re gonna see better, we’re gonna see worse.
  • One more frame of reference thing, we’re gonna look at cars real quick. Obviously these are headed to F-tier! Cars are the worst! We don’t like cars here at beanstem.
  • They are located globally, and, yes I calculated the per-sq m emissions of cars to standardize the units here, and that is 334 kg of carbon per sq m, based on the average car size. And globally, cars emit 3.6 billion tons of carbon.
  • They’re the worst! They’re being banished over here (F-tier).
  • Moving on to your first actual wetland! So we’re looking at salt marshes.
  • Again, that area score is a lot lower at only .18, 180,000 sq km. We can also see that the storage score is actually a lot lower than tropical forests at 5.5 and only 1 globally. That area score’s not doing it any favors there.
  • The sequestration score, though, is almost 4 TIMES tropical forests.
  • Salt marshes are really good at sequestering carbon — that’s your takeaway here!
  • Because it’s trading blows with tropical forests, I think we’re gonna put it in the same category. It’s got that lower storage score but that way higher sequestration score. So kinda trading blows there.
  • Moving onto mangrove forests: again, very similar area score, .14, but if we pull up tropical forests, we can see that both the storage and sequestration score are WAY higher than tropical forests!
  • Storage score is 71.4, that’s almost 3x as dense as tropical forests for storing carbon, and it is also almost 3x as good at sequestering carbon. At least, per sq m.
  • If we compare that to salt marshes, we can see that it’s way better at storing carbon, but not quite as good at sequestering carbon.
  • So your takeaway here is that mangrove forests are really good at storing carbon. Mangrove forests are well-renowned as being very vital carbon sinks because they store a lot of carbon in the ground.
  • We’re going to put those up at A tier, because the sequestration score is pretty similar to the salt marshes, but their storage score is so much better.
  • Last one to look at here is peatlands. That area score is a lot higher than the other ones we’ve seen for the wetlands — that is 2 million sq km globally. And the storage and sequestration scores are also higher. So if we compare that to our first one, to tropical forests here, we can see that it is 10 times better at storing carbon and about 5 times better at sequestering carbon
  • So tropical forests (rain forests) are well-renowned, and they are very vital, important ecosystems, but just looking at these flat numbers, peatlands are incredibly important as ecosystems that sequester and store carbon.
  • Even compared to our mangrove forests up in A, we can see that the storage score is way higher, the sequestration score is way higher.
  • Compared to salt marshes (which are the ones that are good at sequestering), they’re still really good at sequestering compared to peatlands, but peatlands still beat them out.
  • The last thing that I really want to point out about peatlands to sing their praise even more. We see that their area score is only a tenth that of tropical forests. And despite taking up a tenth of the land, they actually store more carbon globally. That global score for peatlands is 469, and for tropical forests it’s 428.
  • Similarly, the sequestration score globally for peatlands is really admirable compared to tropical forests. It’s about half that of tropical forests, but again: they take up a tenth of the land.
  • So that really helps drive home the point about how important peatlands are as ecosystems for carbon sequestration and storage.
  • Because of those incredibly high numbers, I think we have to put that up at S tier where they reign supreme.
  • To kinda drive this point home: It’s hard to find studies that would provide any numbers as broad as “carbon sequestered by all wetlands globally,” but these 3 types do account for a lot of it. And combined, these end up sequestering about 81 million tons of Carbon per year.
  • And even combined, that number doesn’t really compare to the one I brought up earlier for cars at 3.6 BILLION tons of carbon per year.
  • So to give you a better frame of reference, 81 million tons is about equivalent to the yearly emissions of 5.5 million Americans. OR 12.8 million Irish people, which is about 2 and a half Irelands (IEA, 2022)!
  • Wait, which Ireland…

Part 4: Threats

  • Ok! Moving on!
  • Unfortunately, despite the economic, biodiversity, and carbon capture benefits that wetlands provide, there are some things that are threatening these ecosystems.
  • We’ve seen an overall decline in mangroves over the last 20 years (Global Mangrove Alliance, 2022), and this could have some serious consequences for the climate crisis. But what would be causing this?
  • Well, one of the main things is deforestation from logging and development. Actually the main cause of mangrove deforestation is aquaculture development (Friess et al., 2019), which — I don’t get that, because we already talked about how mangroves are great fisheries because of the habitat they provide. So tearing down rich, diverse wetlands and building monoculture, man-made fishing facilities is just nonsensical to me.
  • Aside from causing deforestation, development can also mean building roads and dams that cut through wetlands. Human infrastructure can change the flow of water to cut off part of a wetland and dry it out.
  • Another big threat is eutrophication, caused by fertilizer from the agriculture industry (Hao et al., 2024). A quick rundown on what eutrophication is — when agriculture uses too much fertilizer, it ends up running off into nearby ecosystems like wetlands, lakes, and beaches. The influx of nutrients causes certain algae to have a FIELD day and they grow like crazy, which ends up taking all the oxygen out of the water and suffocating all the fish, frogs, and plants.
  • Yet another threat is invasive species (Hao et al., 2024): plants and animals get introduced and don’t have enough natural predation, so their populations grow like crazy, out-compete native species, and can turn the ecosystem on its head.
  • BUT the main thing threatening wetlands is climate change.
  • THAT’S RIGHT WE’RE GOING BACK TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS BABYYYY!
  • I mean it’s right there in the title. Unless I changed it. I dunno, I don’t know which title will perform the best.
  • So! Climate change! We’re talkin 3 main things here: rising sea levels, natural disasters, and global warming.
  • Rising sea levels can inundate wetlands with salt water (Hao et al., 2024). All that salt coming in can tear through a wetland. Even coastal ecosystems like mangroves and salt marshes can be overwhelmed with more salt than it can handle.
  • Next, natural disasters. Another figure from that same study showed that, quote
    “Approximately 70% of mangrove loss has occurred because of low-frequency, high-intensity weather events, such as tropical cyclones” (Hao et al., 2024).
  • Now, I don’t have time to get into it because this video is already longer than I want, but it is well-documented that human activity and global warming contribute to natural disasters like these and make them more intense (IPCC, 2023).
  • Which leads us to global warming. There’s a few things global warming does to wetlands: For one thing, it speeds up the decomposition process. If you’ll remember, one of the main reasons that wetlands are such great carbon sinks is that the conditions slow down the release of carbon through decomposition. So when the temperature rises and decomposition accelerates again, wetlands can start to release more carbon than they’re capturing (Lolu et al., 2019).
  • Another thing global warming does is it can melt permafrost in tundra wetlands, and that permafrost keeps carbon sealed away, so again we end up releasing more carbon back into the atmosphere (Lolu et al., 2019).
  • But, another thing that I found is that global warming and sea level rise can actually temporarily make wetlands more productive (Cheng et al., 2020; Hao et al., 2024).
  • Salt marshes and mangroves, most of them can actually keep up with some amount of sea level rise. But there’s only so much they can do. And we are seeing places where sea level rise is just too drastic for them to keep up
  • And it’s important to note that these gains are only temporary — there’s only so long we can abuse these ecosystems before they just can’t fight back.
  • And the problem is that when we lose wetlands, we don’t just lose them as natural habitats and storm buffers and all — we also feed into a positive feedback loop of ecosystem collapse.
  • What I mean is, we know that wetlands are a great carbon store, they keep a lot of carbon in the soil and under the water. But when that ecosystem starts to collapse, they’ll start to release that carbon back into the atmosphere, causing even more warming, killing more environments, causing more warming.
  • This principle is why scientists from all around the world are so concerned and why the UN is sounding the alarms. A quote from the International Panel on Climate Change said that:
  • “With further warming, climate change risks will become increasingly complex and more difficult to manage” (IPCC, 2023).

Part 5: Preservation and restoration

  • Ok, that was a lot, let’s take a deep breath and move onto some of the positive stuff and how we can fix it.
  • To start off, the most important thing to take away here is that preserving and restoring existing wetlands is overwhelmingly our best option. It’s the most cost-effective, it provides the most immediate benefits, and it keeps humans and animals from being displaced (Hao et al., 2024).
  • But outside of that, just removing human infrastructure like roads can effectively help restore or even create marshes!
  • Another solution, which addresses increased salinity, is literally just flooding the area with more freshwater (Valach et al., 2021)! In a similar vein, irrigation and dredging can also help stabilize the ecosystem’s water flow.
  • I watched a super cool video recently from the excellent channel Mossy Earth here on YouTube that actually showed this in action. They’ve worked with local organizations and government to flood a huge patch of wetlands in Slovakia, and they’ve shown the difference in the environment and wildlife over the last 2 years of the project, it’s incredibly inspiring. go check it out!
  • Wetlands can be incredibly resilient. Like we mentioned, some wetlands can already keep up with some level of global warming and sea level rise.
  • And like that Mossy Earth project showed, they also bounce back quickly: This study I found showed that, after restoration efforts, all the observed wetlands showed rapid growth, some of them doubling in vegetation cover in only 2 years (Valach et al., 2021)!
  • And there’s a lot of potential: The potential restoration area of marshes, mangroves, and seagrasses is estimated to contribute an additional 229 million tons of carbon per year by 2030 (Hao et al., 2024). That figure does include seagrasses which we didn’t talk about in this video, BUT that’s almost triple the current annual number that we calculated earlier for mangroves, salt marshes, and peatlands!
  • The thing is, from my research, the consensus among scientists is that governments need to be on board. Regulations and policy from governments are vital to encourage restoration and preservation and to keep companies and municipalities from developing these areas
  • To wrap this up, I just want to summarize and reiterate: Wetlands are very resilient ecosystems, and they can bounce back quickly from damage done by humans. But again, the best solution by far is to have governments issuing and enforcing policy to protect and preserve these wetlands and leave them to their natural beauty.

Outro

  • And that’s it! That’s the video! That is how wetlands can help solve the climate crisis!
  • If you’re still around watching, genuinely thank you so much for watching! I really appreciate it.
  • This was a very ambitious first project for me — a 30 minute video with multiple locations. It took me… about 4 months to make, between research, shooting, and editing. And I could not have done this without basically ALL of my friends. So anyone who helped me work on this, thank you so much! I appreciate it!
  • You can check out the description below will be a link to the beanstem.org post about this. That’ll include all of the citations, references, uh, b-roll footage credits. As well as a full transcript! And just any information that could be useful for nerds who want to learn a little bit more.
  • Speaking of, if you’re a nerd who wants to learn a little bit more and you have very similar friends, it would mean a lot to me if you were to share this with your friends. Yeah!
  • I guess that’s pretty much it! Thank you again so much for watching, and hope you have a great day!

B-roll/image/sound credits

B-roll/images

Sounds/music

Video credits

  • Alan Rivero (special thanks)
  • Amanda Dyar (video review)
  • Austin Lord (video review, special thanks)
  • Ben Rankin (host, research, writing, editing)
  • Brent Wilson (camera, script review, fact checking)
  • Caden McGee (video review)
  • David Crompton (script review, fact checking, video review)
  • Jacob Geiger (camera, special thanks)
  • Lizz Childress (special thanks)
  • Margo Leavy (special thanks)
  • May Friem (special thanks)
  • Simone Schuster (script review, fact checking, video review)
  • Sonny Chacon (camera)

References

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