Non-floodplain wetlands are carbon-storage powerhouses

Carbon dynamics in wetlands are important to quantify as wetlands both store and release carbon, affecting global climate-change modeling and mitigation efforts. Non-floodplain wetlands (NFWs) are an abundant freshwater wetland type located outside of frequently flooded streams, rivers, and lake areas. Over half the world’s wetlands may be NFWs. We analyzed data from a multi-year sampling effort of nearly 2000 wetland sites in the conterminous-US (CONUS), sampled to be representative of nearly 38 Mha of CONUS wetlands. Wetlands were classified based on their hydrology and location as NFWs and other wetland types (e.g., associated with rivers, lakes, or estuaries). Wetlands were also classed and analyzed based on their relative condition (i.e., their health relative to other wetlands). Our results show that NFWs are carbon-storing powerhouses: on a per-hectare basis, they store 1.5x the soil carbon of other wetland types. When storage is summed across CONUS, NFWs in total store ~2.0x the total carbon of other wetlands. Wetland condition affects carbon dynamics: least impaired NFWs had 1.8x the carbon stored per-hectare than the most-disturbed NFWs. Waning protection of NFWs, leading to their alteration or destruction, could increase carbon releases to the atmosphere and negatively affect global climate change mitigation. This dataset is associated with the following publication: Lane, C., A. Nahlik, J. Christensen, H. Golden, M. Dumelle, E. D'Amico, and T. Olsen. Non-Floodplain Wetlands Are Carbon-Storage Powerhouses Across the United States. Earth’s Future. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, USA, 13(4): e2024EF005594, (2025).

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[
  "https://doi.org/10.1029/2024ef005594",
  "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12181950"
]