and aquatic ecosystems, so for example, a forest and a stream.

They have unique soils.

They have plants that are adapted to living in those wet conditions, and then they have

water.

Those three things make a wetland.

Fernando: Wetlands control large parts of the hydrologic cycle, but they also control

large parts of the carbon cycle.

It's got a lot of mass, a lot of biomass because there's so much water that it can grow very

quickly.

Ariana: These systems are incredibly productive systems.

And so they are a very impressive what we call “natural carbon sink” that is helping

to mitigate climate change.

Fernando: Wetlands are able to store as much or even more carbon than forests.

Ariana: They're great recreational opportunities, too.

People like to go bird watching in wetlands, for example, or they're some of the most fun

places to go kayaking through.

So they can be very magical, wonderful places to do recreation as well.

VOICEOVER: Wetlands also help improve water quality and protect coastlines from flooding.

But landowners and governments have not always recognized the value of wetlands.

Fernando: Wetlands were seen as essentially swamps—things that you wanted to get rid

of.

So wetlands were systemically destroyed and then converted to urban land in the case of

south Florida.

And the same has been happening in other wetland systems around the world.

VOICEOVER: Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm, Ariana Sutton-Grier and their colleagues at the University

of Maryland's Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center are learning about threats to wetland

ecosystems, and working to find solutions.

Ariana: When we destroy coastal wetlands, that carbon that was locked up in that soil

very rapidly gets lost back to the atmosphere.

So what was a really important natural carbon sink has suddenly become a new human-caused

source of carbon.

Fernando: The constant and frequent flooding that occurs in Florida is because wetlands

were there to prevent that from happening.

You get rid of the wetlands, you start flooding.

VOICEOVER: Miralles-Wilhelm recently contributed to a National Academies report on the restoration

of the Florida Everglades.

Fernando: And essentially climate change has two key effects on Everglades restoration.

The Everglades are very low-lying wetlands, which means that they're very susceptible

to sea level rise.

Salt is able to move in and displace fresh water.

Climate change probably will decrease the amount of rain that goes in, so when you have

less rain coming in and sea water moving through, what you create is what I like to refer to

as a sandwich effect, where basically fresh water is being squeezed out on both ends.

VOICEOVER: Sutton-Grier recently co-authored a study in the journal Frontiers in Ecology

and the Environment that found coastal wetlands to be exceptionally good at storing carbon.

Ariana: We get asked all the time, why are you only talking about wetlands?

Why are we not talking about corals?

Why are we not talking about fish?

Coastal blue carbon is the carbon taken up and stored in coastal wetlands: mangroves,

salt marsh and tidal marshes, and also sea grasses.

The answer on corals, kelp, and on fish is they are very important habitats.

They are, however, not long-term carbon sinks.

VOICEOVER: The University of Maryland has a large part to play in the future of wetlands

research.

Fernando: I think as we move forward with increasing threats of climate change, we really

need a new generation of practitioners and professionals, to attack these problems that

are going to be probably much more severe than they are today.

Ariana: I get to work here with faculty at University of Maryland and I also sit at the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

My position really allows me to bridge a lot of worlds so that I am really at that science

and policy nexus, really thinking about how is the science we're doing getting used

for better management and policymaking.

Fernando: The fact that we've gotten better and better at measuring wetland biomass from

space, using remote sensing satellite technology, is what has enhanced in a very short period

of time—and I'm really looking at the last 10 years—our understanding of wetlands as

systems.

So if you look at the University of Maryland, within a five-mile radius you will find the

highest concentration of Earth system remote sensing scientists in the world.

And that is what we bring to the table very effectively in the area of wetlands.