Beschreibung:
Why are tropical wetlands so important? Indonesia has more tropical peat swamp and mangrove forests than any other nation on Earth. The country has about 21 million hectares of tropical peat swamp forests and about 3 million ha of mangroves. Globally this accounts for half of tropical peat swamp forests and almost a quarter of the world's mangroves. These ecosystems are highly productive and harbour a unique range of aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity. They also play an important role in controlling the delivery of water from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems and provide a buffering function against the transmission of pollutants across this interface. Mangroves are important sources of energy and nutrients for coral reefs, buffer coastal zones from tropical storms, and are extremely valuable as fish and wildlife nurseries. Because of the accumulation of carbon over several millennia, Indonesia's tropical peatlands and mangroves are among the largest terrestrial carbon pools on Earth (Donato et al. 2011, Murdiyarso et al. 2010). The rates of land-cover change occurring in tropical wetlands are among the highest of any forest type. An estimated 45% of Indonesia's peat forests have been deforested or drained, thus creating a shift in their function from globally significant carbon sinks to globally significant sources of CO2 emissions. In general, 63% of emissions from peat swamp forest conversion arises from the decomposition of peat (Hergoualc'h and Verchot 2011). Tropical wetlands are of great interest because of the numerous ecosystem services at risk and the large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions that arise from land conversion. Additional interests are related to their roles in mitigating climate change ...