Wetlands the superheroes of the natural world

[Music]

the theme for this series of talks is

count down to a better future an

opportunity to discuss ways that we can

create

a different safer greener future

and i want to suggest that nature can

help us get

there nature can help us build that

better future

it wants to help us it just needs us

to understand and to support it and

one area of nature in particular offers

us more

solutions than any other but before we

begin

i just want you to imagine your favorite

natural habitat it could be somewhere

that you visit regularly or somewhere

that you’ve just seen pictures of or

videos often you’re just drawn to

picture in your mind now i’m going to

guess that you

are thinking about somewhere like a

forest

a woodland a wildflower meadow maybe a

tropical rainforest

or even the deep ocean what i’m going to

reckon you’re not

thinking about is a bog a swamp

a mire and i don’t actually blame you

for not thinking about those habitats

because throughout history we have not

just

overlooked these habitats we’ve actively

demonized them but these bogs these

swamps

these mires these wetland habitats they

hold the key

to helping us reach that better future

and they can present

answers to some of the most pressing

environmental problems we are facing

from climate change to microplastic

pollution

and this makes them the superheroes of

the natural world now

i may be a little bit biased because i

am actually a wetland scientist from

bangor university so i get to spend my

time

studying these fantastic habitats

but i want to share with you just a few

reasons why wetlands are so great so

that the next time

somebody asks you what your favorite

habitat is you will think

of a wetland so let’s define though what

a wetland is

because it’s actually quite a

complicated process and there are lots

of different definitions out there

but really all a wetland is is a border

zone

it’s a zone between a truly terrestrial

land-based habitat and a truly aquatic

or marine habitat

it’s this squishy soggy bit in between

not quite land

and not quite water in fact it’s been

said that to

work or move around in a wetland you

can’t use a pair of shoes your feet will

get wet

you can’t use a boat there’s not enough

standing water what you need

is a decent pair of wellies and wetlands

are found

throughout the world there’s coastal

wetlands inland wetlands there’s

marshes mangroves swamps but here

wimbery moss where we have a sphingor

which is a special type of

floating wetland and they all

share though a set of key

characteristics

which sets them apart from all other

ecosystems

and it’s these characteristics that make

them invaluable

to us and to all life on earth

so i am going to give you four reasons

why wetlands are the superheroes of the

natural world actually no

i’m not i’m going to give you five

because the first reason

is a little bit different to the others

because it’s actually a little bit of a

look back to the past

because the first reason why wetlands

are so great is

culture and civilization our entire

history

in fact our development as a species is

tied up

with wetlands some of them some of the

oldest

human remains have been found on or near

wetlands

suggesting that we have always relied on

them for the abundance of natural

resources that we find there

and we still rely on them now billions

of people

still rely on a wetland plant for their

staple food

rice and one of the most commonly used

painkillers

aspirin is derived from a wetland plant

willow in fact if you have a headache

now and you chew on some willow leaves

or some willow bark

it will reduce the pain the ancient

egyptians

thought of by many as a desert people

actually owe their success

to a wetland a riparian wetland running

adjacent to the river nile which

produced that rich fertile land which

they needed

the ancient mayans harnessed the power

of wetlands

to produce crops and an intensive way to

feed their densely populated cities

and settlements along the eastern side

of england are

were established by the romans who used

the salt marshes and the fence for the

production of salt which was then

shipped around their empire

wetlands also feature heavily in our

culture and our literature

albeit not in very positive ways even

our

language is littered with our negative

thinking about wetlands

i’m bogged down with work i’m swamped

today and how many monsters

boogie men and evil nerdwells have their

hideouts in

myers and moors and how many times

do storytellers both ancient and modern

use bogs and swamps as an artistic

shorthand

to show that an area is bad and not good

throughout our throughout our language

from our earliest

english writing from the poem of beowulf

right

up to dc comics latest tv series the

swamp thing

wetlands are depicted as sinister evil

dark places nothing

further could be from the truth which

leads me neatly onto my second point

why wetlands are so great and that is

biodiversity

what do i mean by biodiversity well in

this case i’m thinking about the number

and variety of species in any given

location

and wetlands are amongst the most bar

diverse places on the planet

take mangroves for example swamps

coastal swamps found along the equator

which have been described

as the nurseries of the ocean because so

many fish

and sea life depend on them during their

life cycle

why do they do this well first of all

they’re incredibly productive providing

food for every level of the food chain

and then there’s this dense tangle of

roots and branches which offer

safety and security and many of the

species there

have special adaptations to cope with

the conditions

take the mangrove trees themselves for

example they have

mechanisms and processes put in place to

cope with the salinity the saline

conditions and the water log conditions

one of the best is the new metaphors a

special root system which works like a

snorkel

coming up from the roots through the mud

out through the water into the air

bringing oxygen down into the plant and

that’s just

mangroves there are so many other types

of wetlands

we’ve got our peat swamps our freshwater

swamps our marshes these are home

to some of the most charismatic animals

you can think of from

orangutans and tigers to alligators and

eagles

why are they so biodiverse though well

one of the reasons is because they’re so

productive and they have so many natural

resources

but the other is to do with that first

fact i told you about wetlands the fact

that they’re

not quite land and not quite water

they’re this magical world in between

this meeting place between two habitats

this is called an

ecotone and it means that you get

species which are specially adapted for

living

in your wetland but you also get

visitors from the land

and from the water coming into your

wetlands and relying on them for food

resources and everything else that they

need so that’s reason number two

reason number three why wetlands are so

good

is cleaning our water

let’s leave wetlands for just a second

and think about our kidneys

organs in the body which filter out

waste and remove chemicals from our

blood

cleaning our blood well wetlands act as

the

landscapes kidneys because unfortunately

many of our waterways our rivers have

pollutants in them chemicals in them

and if the water flows through a wetland

those chemicals

can be filtered out removed broken down

by wetlands they’re able to do this

because of special relationships between

the plants

the soil and the microbes and wetlands

are so

good at cleaning our water that we now

build

artificial wetlands constructed

treatment wetlands to remove a huge

range of different pollutants from

excess fertilizers heavy metals

and even pharmaceutical waste and at

bangor university

we’re starting to look whether we can

use treatment wetlands to remove

micro from our water

so reason number three is cleaning our

water reason number four

why wetlands is so are so great is

flood prevention as we know from our

local area here in nantwich flooding is

becoming an

ever-increasing problem but wetlands can

help us here as well

now this may seem a little

counter-intuitive because wetlands are

well wet but they can first of all

wetlands along the coast

salt marshes and mangroves can act as

incredibly effective

buffers protecting shorelines from

storms and even hurricanes

and then moving inland wetlands can act

as giant

sponges holding onto water and storing

water

wetlands like floodplains wet meadows

and riparian wetlands are especially

effective at this

and we see big problems when those types

of wetlands are

damaged destroyed or even built on and

in the uplands

wetlands can help to reduce the flow of

water

when heavy rain hits the hillsides they

slow the

speed of water from hitting our rivers

preventing

a huge spike in the levels of rivers

which can then burst their banks

and flood our homes and businesses and

one

wetland animal in particular is

especially good

at slowing the flow of water and that is

the beaver now beavers build their

iconic dams which create these fantastic

biodiverse beaver ponds behind them but

the beaver dam is actually quite special

because it’s actually a leaky dam it

doesn’t stop

all the water flowing through it it just

holds the bulk of it back

so when you get a storm event lots of

heavy rain and a huge volume of water

comes crashing through the river system

the leaky dam stops not all of it but

allows a steady stream of water to flow

through if it stops

all of it it could create flooding

further up but instead it slows the flow

meaning that further downstream

the river stays at a relatively constant

level it doesn’t burst its banks

and flood those homes and those villages

and our towns

and i can’t leave the conversation about

beavers without

discussing my favorite story about these

wonderful

rodents now um in the late 1940s early

1950s in the american state of idaho

the authorities were getting concerned

that there were too many beavers in some

areas

so what they decided to do was move some

beavers around to more remote locations

and so what they did was they captured

their beats on beavers and put them in

vehicles and on horses

and transported them to the locations

they wanted them in but these journeys

were pretty long and very arduous

and unfortunately some of the beavers

died so

one bright spark came up with the idea

of

parachuting beavers into the remote

locations

and there is a scientific paper all

about

building the best beaver-friendly

parachuting crate

for this very purpose and the whole

project

was an incredible success so there you

go

parachuting beavers and if you thought

it couldn’t get any better than that

then it does because i have saved the

best till last

reason number five why wetlands are so

good

is climate control wetlands can control

our climate how do they do this well

wetland plants just like all plants

taking carbon

in the form of carbon dioxide through

photosynthesis and then you and then

a proportion of this carbon gets used to

form the plant structures and when the

plants die usually

they decompose they rot away and

eventually those plant structures

get broken down and the carbon gets

released back into the atmosphere

as carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas it’s

the carbon cycle

but in a wetland that decomposition

process

can be all but stopped the

special water log conditions in some

peatlands

prevent what prevent plants from

decomposing

so that carbon in the plant structures

doesn’t get broken down and releases a

greenhouse gas

instead it stays locked up as a sort of

semi-decomposed plant goo

now this plant goo is actually called

peat and

it makes up a type of wetland called

peatlands bogs

and fens and peatlands are really giant

inefficient compost heaps building up

slowly

layer after layer of this

semi-decomposed plant material

over thousands of years and storing

climate changing amounts of carbon and i

really do mean that

because our peatlands are actually our

most

important terrestrial store of carbon

they they cover just a fraction of the

earth’s surface yet they store

at least twice the amount of carbon that

is found in all our world’s forests

so although there is a big push by many

countries at the present time

to plant more trees to remove the excess

carbon in the atmosphere

if we really want to get serious about

reducing our greenhouse gases

then we must get serious about looking

after our

peatlands because once a peatland is

destroyed

not only do you release all that carbon

that’s been stored up in it

but it stops the whole process of that

slow storage and locking away of carbon

and for centuries we have destroyed our

peatlands

we’ve dug them up we’ve used them for

fuel we’ve used them to make compost we

grow our

flowers our petunias in something that

has taken

thousands of years to make and holds the

key

to controlling our climate fortunately

there is hope

and many organizations like natural

england

wildfowl and wetland trust the rspb and

the wildlife trusts

are understanding the importance of our

peelins and they’re looking after them

and working out ways that we can better

manage and conserve them

and work that we’re doing at bangor

university and many other universities

are looking at ways that we can restore

and revegetate our damaged peatlands

and perhaps most exciting of all at

bangor we’re looking at ways that we can

naturally manipulate that decomposition

in our peatlands

to further suppress it so that peatlands

could store

even more carbon so there you have it

five reasons why wetlands should be your

favorite habitat the next time somebody

asks you

and here in cheshire east we are so

lucky to have so many fantastic

wetland habitats on our doorstep for us

to explore

wetlands have shaped civilizations from

the most

ancient times and they continue to do so

they feed us

they give us medicines and other

resources they are wildlife havens they

clean our water

they prevent flooding and they control

our climate

if as the theme of this seed these

series of talks states

we want to build a better future we must

look to our wetlands we must give better

protection

to our fends our bogs and our swamps we

must give greater

importance to our salt marshes and our

mangroves

because wetlands truly are the

superheroes

of the natural world