Tropical wetlands, climate, and land-use change: adaptation and mitigation opportunities

Tropical wetland ecosystems, especially mangroves and peatlands, are carbon (C) rich ecosystems. Globally, tropical mangroves store about 20 PgC, however, deforestation has contributed 10 % of the total global emissions from tropical deforestation, even though mangroves account for only about 0.7 % of the world’s tropical forest area (Donato et al. 2011). Meanwhile, tropical peatlands store 191 PgC or approximately 33 % of global peatland C (Post et al. 1982; Page and Rieley 1999). This disproportionate capacity of tropical wetlands to sequester and store C make them a critical component in understanding local, regional and global C stocks that influence the balance of greenhouse gases to and from the atmosphere.