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