Wetlands cover only about 5%–8% of the world’s land surface, but they provide essential ecosystem services for humankind, including carbon sequestration, climate mitigation, flood mitigation, coastal protection, water purification, and habitat provision (; ). Nevertheless, local communities have limited knowledge about wetlands, which influences the implementation of wetland protection programs (Allahyari et al.). In addition, wetlands are highly threatened by climate change and human activities, such as flooding, global warming, grazing, drainage, cultivation, water pollution, and urbanization (Aura et al.; ). Therefore, there is an urgent need to protect wetlands, and investigate the response of wetland ecosystems to these disturbances.
This Research Topic consists of six original papers and one review paper, which attempted to help address the abovementioned issues. Recent findings on the effects of climate change and human disturbances on wetland functions and biochemical processes have been reported.
Wetlands are essential carbon sinks due to their higher productivity than ecosystem respiration (Noumonvi et al.). Ecosystem respiration (ER) is composed of autotrophic respiration (AR) that consists of respiration by plant parts, and heterotrophic respiration (HR) that consists of respiration by microbial bacteria. With climate warming and human drainage, ER could increase (Zhou et al.), and the contributions of HR and AR to the ER can be altered (Rankin et al.). Not only respiration but also methane (CH4) emission is affected by the climate and human activities. It has been reported that CH4 emission in wetlands would increase 50%–80% by the year 2,100 under climate change () and significantly increase under human disturbances (Benavides et al.).
Besides carbon cycling, nitrogen cycling in wetland ecosystems is also affected by climate change and human disturbances. For instance, climate warming could mitigate the positive effect of nitrogen deposition on nitrous oxide emissions (; ). Urease and nitrate reductase activities have been reported to increase with climate change and human activities (Chang et al.).
The papers brought together a wide range of aspects related to the impacts of climate change and human disturbances on wetland ecosystems, which helps us better understand the carbon and nitrogen cycling of wetlands. In addition, the dominant drivers and biogeochemical dynamics for disturbed wetlands have been well illustrated, which benefits the development of wetland management and restoration strategies.
Statements
Author contributions
JW: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing–original draft, Writing–review and editing. YG: Writing–original draft, Writing–review and editing. HC: Writing–review and editing. JL: Writing–review and editing. JJ: Writing–review and editing.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The authors declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.
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References
1
GongY.WuJ. (2021). Vegetation composition modulates the interaction of climate warming and elevated nitrogen deposition on nitrous oxide flux in a boreal peatland. Glob. Change Biol.27, 5588–5598. 10.1111/gcb.15865
2
GongY.WuJ.VogtJ.LeT. B. (2019). Warming reduces the increase in N2O emission under nitrogen fertilization in a boreal peatland. Sci. Total Environ.664, 72–78. 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.02.012
3
KoffiE. N.BergamaschiP.AlkamaR.CescattiA. (2020). An observation-constrained assessment of the climate sensitivity and future trajectories of wetland methane emissions. Sci. Adv.6, eaay4444. 10.1126/sciadv.aay4444
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MitschW. J.BernalB.NahlikA. M.ManderÜ.ZhangL.AndersonC. J.et al (2013). Wetlands, carbon, and climate change. Landsc. Ecol.28, 583–597. 10.1007/s10980-012-9758-8
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SiebenE. J. J.KhubekaS. P.SitholeS.JobN. M.KotzeD. C. (2017). The classification of wetlands: integration of top-down and bottom-up approaches and their significance for ecosystem service determination. Wetl. Ecol. Manag.26, 441–458. 10.1007/s11273-017-9585-4
6
XuX.ChenM.YangG.JiangB.ZhangJ. (2020). Wetland ecosystem services research: a critical review. Glob. Ecol. Conservation22, e01027. 10.1016/j.gecco.2020.e01027
Summary
Keywords
wetlands, ecosystem ecology, biogeochemistry, human disturbance, climate change, natural disturbance
Citation
Wu J, Gong Y, Chen H, Loisel J and Jarveoja J (2024) Editorial: Wetland ecology and biogeochemistry under natural and human disturbance- volume II. Front. Earth Sci. 12:1369852. doi: 10.3389/feart.2024.1369852
Received
13 January 2024
Accepted
24 January 2024
Published
27 February 2024
Volume
12 - 2024
Edited and reviewed by
Timothy Ian Eglinton, ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Updates
Copyright
© 2024 Wu, Gong, Chen, Loisel and Jarveoja.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Jianghua Wu, jianghuaw@mun.ca, jianghuawu@gmail.com
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.