Search

Various features of a landscape contribute to the regulating ecosystem service of reducing waterborne pollutant loading to downstream environments. At local scales, wetlands have been shown to be effective in retaining pollutants. Here, we investigate the landscape-scale contribution to pollutant retention provided by multiple wetlands. We develop a general analytical model which shows that the retention contribution of wetlands and other landscape features is only significant if a large fraction of the total waterborne pollutant transport passes through them. Next, by means of a statistical analysis of official data, we quantify the nutrient retention contribution of wetlands for multiple sub-catchments in two Swedish Water Management Districts. We compare this with the retention contribution of two other landscape features: the waterborne transport distance and major lakes. The landscape-scale retention contribution of wetlands is undetectable; rather, the other two landscape features account for much of the total nutrient retention.

On‐going climatic changes and land‐use changes may impact water storage dynamics within wetlandscapes (defined as the entire hydrological catchments of interconnected wetland systems). These dynamics are closely linked to many wetland ecosystem services including flood buffering, nutrient retention and biodiversity support. Here, we investigate if and how current water storage dynamics can differ between wetlands within the same wetlandscape. Based on continuous monitoring of water levels in multiple wetlands throughout a growing season (spring, summer, autumn) in Vattholma, Sweden, we show that there are two distinct storage behaviours depending on the position of the wetland within the landscape. Headwater wetland regions were active in temporary storage of surplus water from regular summer rains while water levels of downstream wetlands dropped to seasonal low values without responding to individual summer precipitation events. Thereby, the downstream wetlands maintained capacity to buffer extreme floods. We also found that headwater wetlands were associated with complex and patchy inundation, which causes habitat conditions to vary over short time scales both within and among these wetlands, in contrast to the prolonged low‐water state of the downstream wetlands. These differences between headwater‐downstream wetlands imply that the functionality of an entire wetlandscape cannot be assessed by simple extrapolation of data from monitoring stations that typically are located downstream of headwater regions. Increased understanding of these differences can support wetland management practices that target location‐specific nature‐based solutions and ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Warming and hydrological changes have already affected and shifted environments in the Arctic. Arctic wetlands are complex systems of coupled hydrological, ecological, and permafrost‐related processes, vulnerable to such environmental changes. This review uses a systems perspective approach to synthesize and elucidate the various interlinked responses and feedbacks of Arctic wetlands to hydroclimatic changes. Starting from increased air temperatures, subsequent permafrost thaw and concurrent hydrological changes are identified as key factors for both shrinkage and expansion of wetland area. Other diverse factors further interact with warming, hydrological changes, and permafrost thaw in altering the Arctic wetland systems. Surface albedo shifts driven by land cover alterations are powerful in reinforcing Arctic warming, while vegetation‐related factors can balance and decelerate permafrost thaw, causing negative feedback loops. With the vast amounts of carbon stored in Arctic wetlands, their changes in turn affect the global carbon cycle. Overall, the systems perspectives outlined and highlighted in this review can be useful in structuring and elucidating the interactions of wetlands with climate, hydrological, and other environmental changes in the Arctic, including the essential permafrost‐carbon feedback. This article is categorized under:Water and Life > Nature of Freshwater EcosystemsWater and Life > Stresses and Pressures on EcosystemsScience of Water > Water and Environmental Change [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wetlands provide multiple ecosystem services of local and global importance, but currently there exists no comprehensive, high‐quality wetland map for the Arctic region. Improved information about Arctic wetland extents and their vulnerability to climate change is essential for adaptation and mitigation efforts, including for indigenous people dependent on the ecosystem services that wetlands provide, as inadequate planning could result in dire consequences for societies and ecosystems alike. Synthesizing high‐resolution wetland databases and datasets on soil wetness and soil types from multiple sources, we created the first high‐resolution map with full coverage of Arctic wetlands. We assess the vulnerability of Arctic wetlands for the years 2050, 2075, and 2100, using datasets on permafrost extent, soil types, and projected mean annual air temperature from the HadGEM2‐ES climate model for three change scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5). Our mapping shows that wetlands cover approximately 3.5 million km2 or roughly 25% of Arctic landmass and 99% of these wetlands are in permafrost areas, indicating considerable vulnerability to future climate change. Unless global warming is limited to scenario RCP2.6, robust results show that large areas of Arctic wetlands are vulnerable to ecosystem regime shifts. If scenario RCP8.5 becomes a reality, at least 50% of the Arctic wetland area would be highly vulnerable to regime shifts with considerable adverse impacts on human health, infrastructure, economics, ecosystems, and biodiversity. The developed wetland and vulnerability maps can aid planning and prioritization of the most vulnerable areas for protection and mitigation of change. Plain Language Summary: Wetlands play an important role in the Arctic; they cool the global climate, hold freshwater for animals and plants, regulate water, carbon, and nutrient cycling, and are biologically diverse and of great importance for indigenous human activities. Large areas lie on frozen ground (permafrost), but this could thaw out under expected future global and regional warming. Permafrost thaw can lead to wetland change leading to ecosystem as well as societal problems since the permafrost also acts as the foundation for roads and buildings in the Arctic. Through combined multi‐variable mapping, we estimate that wetlands cover 25% of land in the Arctic region, almost entirely on permafrost areas. Air temperatures above −2 degrees Celsius may lead to permafrost thaw and associated wetlands drainage, and this is enhanced by higher temperatures and longer durations of temperature elevation. If global temperatures increase by more than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels to year 2100, 30%–50% of Arctic wetlands are vulnerable to change. Limiting global warming is critical for preserving Arctic wetlands and reducing societal and ecosystem impacts of their changes. Key Points: Multi‐data synthesis shows that wetlands cover 25% of the Arctic landmassAround 50% of Arctic wetlands are vulnerable to permafrost thaw by the year 2100 in climate scenario RCP8.5Much of the permafrost underlying Arctic wetland areas can remain stable up until the year 2100 under climate scenario RCP2.6 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geography and associated hydrological, hydroclimate and land-use conditions and their changes determine the states and dynamics of wetlands and their ecosystem services. The influences of these controls are not limited to just the local scale of each individual wetland but extend over larger landscape areas that integrate multiple wetlands and their total hydrological catchment – the wetlandscape. However, the data and knowledge of conditions and changes over entire wetlandscapes are still scarce, limiting the capacity to accurately understand and manage critical wetland ecosystems and their services under global change. We present a new Wetlandscape Change Information Database (WetCID), consisting of geographic, hydrological, hydroclimate and land-use information and data for 27 wetlandscapes around the world. This combines survey-based local information with geographic shapefiles and gridded datasets of large-scale hydroclimate and land-use conditions and their changes over whole wetlandscapes. Temporally, WetCID contains 30-year time series of data for mean monthly precipitation and temperature and annual land-use conditions. The survey-based site information includes local knowledge on the wetlands, hydrology, hydroclimate and land uses within each wetlandscape and on the availability and accessibility of associated local data. This novel database (available through PANGAEA 10.1594/PANGAEA.907398; Ghajarnia et al., 2019) can support site assessments; cross-regional comparisons; and scenario analyses of the roles and impacts of land use, hydroclimatic and wetland conditions, and changes in whole-wetlandscape functions and ecosystem services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geography and associated hydrological, hydroclimate and land use conditions and their changes determine the states and dynamics of wetlands and their ecosystem services. The influences of these controls are not limited to just the local scale of each individual wetland, but extend over larger landscape areas that integrate multiple wetlands and their total hydrological catchment – the wetlandscape. However, the data and knowledge of conditions and changes over entire wetlandscapes are still scarce, limiting the capacity to accurately understand and manage critical wetland ecosystems and their services under global change. We present a new database, consisting of geographic, hydrological, hydroclimate and land use information and data for 27 wetlandscapes around the world. This combines survey-based local information with geographic shapefiles and gridded datasets of large-scale hydroclimate and land use conditions and their changes over whole wetlandscapes. Temporally, the database contains 30-year time series of data for mean monthly precipitation and temperature, and annual land use conditions. The survey-based site information includes local knowledge on the wetlands, hydrology, hydroclimate and land uses within each wetlandscape, and on the availability and accessibility of associated local data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the potential of wetlands to dampen temporal variability of water flow through the landscape, they are increasingly considered as possible nature‐based solutions to mitigate risks of flooding and drought. In this study, we investigate flow variability by means of a flow dampening factor and use observation data from 1984 to 2013 for 82 Swedish catchments to statistically and comparatively analyze the large‐scale effects on this factor of multiple wetlands and lakes in the landscape. The results show good correlation between large‐scale flow dampening and relative area of lakes and floodplain wetlands within a catchment. An increase in relative area up to around 15% for lakes and 0.5% for floodplain wetlands lowers the temporal standard deviation of runoff (R) to around 10%–15% of that for precipitation (P), compared with a common flow‐variability dampening of around 35% for catchments with lake‐wetland area close to zero. Further increase in these relative areas, or in those of wetland types other than floodplain wetlands, has little or no flow dampening effect. The results indicate that the large‐scale flow dampening effect of lakes and floodplain wetlands is mainly due to their water‐storage capacity and less due to their possible effects on the partitioning of P between R and evapotranspiration. Overall, the results emphasize the importance of accounting for the problem scale and relative water‐storage capacity of wetlands when considering their large‐scale efficiency as possible nature‐based solutions for large‐scale flow‐variability regulation in whole catchments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Priorities and Interactions of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with Focus on Wetlands. The authors wish to make the following correction to this paper [[1]]: The author name "Zahra Kalantary" should be "Zahra Kalantari". 1 Jaramillo F., Desormeaux A., Hedlund J., Jawitz J.W., Clerici N., Piemontese L., Rodríguez-Rodriguez J.A., Anaya J.A., Blanco-Libreros J.F., Borja S. Priorities and interactions of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with focus on wetlands. [Extracted from the article]

Wetlands are essential parts of Arctic landscapes, playing important roles for the sustainable development of the region, and linking to climate change and adaptation, ecosystem services, and the livelihood of local people. The effects of human and natural change drivers on key landscape characteristics of Arctic wetlands may be critical for ecosystem resilience, with some functional aspects still poorly understood. This paper reviews the scientific literature on change drivers for Arctic wetland landscapes, seeking to identify the main studied interactions among different drivers and landscape characteristics and their changes, as well as emerging research gaps in this context. In a total of 2232 studies of various aspects of Arctic wetland landscapes found in the literature, natural drivers and climate change have been the most studied change drivers so far, particularly regarding their impacts on carbon cycling, plant communities and biodiversity. In contrast, management plans, land use changes, and nutrient-pollutant loading, have not been investigated as much as human drivers of Arctic wetland change. This lack of study highlights essential gaps in wetland related research, and between such research and management of Arctic wetlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wetlands are often vital physical and social components of a country's natural capital, as well as providers of ecosystem services to local and national communities. We performed a network analysis to prioritize Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for sustainable development in iconic wetlands and wetlandscapes around the world. The analysis was based on the information and perceptions on 45 wetlandscapes worldwide by 49 wetland researchers of the Global Wetland Ecohydrological Network (GWEN). We identified three 2030 Agenda targets of high priority across the wetlandscapes needed to achieve sustainable development: Target 6.3—"Improve water quality"; 2.4—"Sustainable food production"; and 12.2—"Sustainable management of resources". Moreover, we found specific feedback mechanisms and synergies between SDG targets in the context of wetlands. The most consistent reinforcing interactions were the influence of Target 12.2 on 8.4—"Efficient resource consumption"; and that of Target 6.3 on 12.2. The wetlandscapes could be differentiated in four bundles of distinctive priority SDG-targets: "Basic human needs", "Sustainable tourism", "Environmental impact in urban wetlands", and "Improving and conserving environment". In general, we find that the SDG groups, targets, and interactions stress that maintaining good water quality and a "wise use" of wetlandscapes are vital to attaining sustainable development within these sensitive ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key question for the evolution of thermokarst wetlands and lakes in Arctic and sub-Arctic permafrost regions is how large-scale warming interacts with local landscape conditions in driving permafrost thaw and its spatial variability. To answer this question, which also relates to risks for ecology, society, and health, we perform systematic model simulations of various soil-permafrost cases combined with different surface-warming trends. Results show that both the prevalence and the thaw of permafrost depended strongly on local soil conditions and varied greatly with these for the same temperature conditions at the surface. Greater ice contents and depth extents, but also greater subsurface volumes thawing at depth under warming, are found for peat soils than other studied soil/rock formations. As such, more thaw-driven regime shifts in wetland/lake ecosystems, and associated releases of previously frozen carbon and pathogens, may be expected under the same surface warming for peatlands than other soil conditions. Such risks may also increase in fast permafrost thaw in mineral soils, with only small thaw-protection effects indicated in the present simulations for possible desertification enhancement of mineral soil covers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wetlands constitute an essential integral part of Arctic landscapes and play an important role in sustainable regional development, as they are directly linked to climate change and adaptation, ecosystem services, and the livelihood of local people. The effects of natural and anthropogenic pressures on Arctic wetlands and their biodiversity and functioning can be critical for ecosystem resilience, with development trajectories suggesting pressure increases over the coming decades. Understanding the impacts of regional and global changes on these wetlands and their landscapes, ecosystems and services, and devising suitable solutions for impact mitigation is a major challenge for scientists, decision makers, and stakeholders. This study reviews the status of Arctic wetland research considering some fundamental questions for their management: (1) What is known about the main drivers affecting the functionality of Arctic wetlands and their landscapes? (2) How have these drivers and their impacts been assessed in the scientific literature on Arctic wetlands? (3) What key findings and research gaps emerge from the literature on wetland services and their landscape characteristics? (4) What management aspects have been studied with regard to restoration of Arctic wetlands and preservation of their services? Our review identifies extensive research on various natural and human-induced drivers and their impacts on characteristics of Arctic wetland landscapes, whereas some aspects of wetland functionality and ecosystems still remain to be investigated, such as efficiency aspects of wetland management strategies and plans. It is further unclear if, and to what extent, research findings on the characteristics, interactions, and ongoing changes of Arctic wetlands are applied in management strategies and plans. This study also highlights a need for research on implementations and impacts of such strategies and plans, in order to contribute to their developments, applications and improvements. In addition, decision makers and managers need to increasingly develop and base such strategies and plans on available scientific knowledge of the functioning of Arctic wetlands, their landscapes and ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]