Wetlands are common features in deserts around the world, and support a wide array of life. When active, they serve as important watering holes for humans and animals alike, support vegetation that depends on access to groundwater for survival, and act as catchments for eolian and alluvial sediments.

One thing all deserts have in common is that they are arid, or dry. Most experts agree that a desert is an area of land that receives no more than 25 centimeters (10 inches) of precipitation a year. The amount of evaporation in a desert often greatly exceeds the annual rainfall. Some deserts are mountainous.

The world’s wetlands are ecosystems in themselves, and are defined by the flora and fauna they support. Marshes are nutrient-rich wetlands that support a variety of reeds and grasses, while swamps are defined by their ability to support woody plants and trees.

Description. Non-tidal marshes are the most prevalent and widely distributed wetlands in North America. They are mostly freshwater marshes, although some are brackish or alkaline. They frequently occur along streams in poorly drained depressions and in the shallow water along the boundaries of lakes, ponds and rivers.

Each wetland differs due to variations in soils, landscape, climate, water regime and chemistry, vegetation, and human disturbance. Below are brief descriptions of the major types of wetlands found in the United States organized into four general categories: marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens.

Besides filling them in or damming them, humans have also damaged or destroyed wetlands by planting invasive alien species around them, draining them by piping the water out to sea, or directing filthy stormwater from cities towards them.

Far from being useless, disease-ridden places, wetlands provide values that no other ecosystem can. These include natural water quality improvement, flood protection, shoreline erosion control, opportunities for recreation and aesthetic appreciation and natural products for our use at no cost.

5 Ways to Protect Wetlands on Your Property

1. Maintain a buffer strip of native plants along streams and wetlands.
2. Use pesticides and fertilizers sparingly.
3. Avoid non-native and invasive species of plants.
4. Avoid stormwater run-off and don’t pollute.
5. Keep your pets under control.

Human activities cause wetland degradation and loss by changing water quality, quantity, and flow rates; increasing pollutant inputs; and changing species composition as a result of disturbance and the introduction of nonnative species.

The only safe advice available is to manage wetlands in their existing condition in a manner that retains the vegetation, hydrology/water regime, and soils as they exist. Such activities as recreation, sound forest management, and other passive uses are safe.

Alligators, snakes, turtles, newts and salamanders are among the reptiles and amphibians that live in wetlands. Invertebrates, such as crayfish, shrimp, mosquitoes, snails and dragonflies, also live in wetlands, along with birds including plover, grouse, storks, herons and other waterfowl.

Wetlands have the potential to absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide via photosynthesis, and flooded soils have low oxygen levels which decrease rates of decomposition to promote the retention of soil carbon.

All wetlands sequester carbon from the atmosphere through plant photosynthesis and by acting as sediment traps for runoff. Carbon is held in the living vegetation as well as in litter, peats, organic soils, and sediments that have built up, in some instances, over thousands of years.

Natural peat-forming wetlands store carbon, release small amounts of nitrous oxide and larger amounts of methane. However, when they are drained and converted to other uses, large amounts of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide are released, while methane emissions drop or are removed (WBGU, 1998).

They absorb water and use what’s in it to grow. So not only do wetlands have water storage capabilities in their soils, they have it in their plants. Water in wetlands is either released naturally and slowly over time to groundwater supplies, streams, or it evaporates.

When an area floods with water, wetlands act like a giant sponge. This is because the living plants and even the dead plant matter can absorb the extra water. By absorbing this extra floodwater, wetlands also help slow down the movement of this water to surrounding areas – areas where people may have houses!

Most scientists consider swamps, marshes, and bogs to be the three major kinds of wetlands.