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Wetlands contain 771 billion tons of greenhouse gases, one-fifth of all the carbon on Earth and about the same amount of carbon as is now in the atmosphere, scientists said before an international conference linking wetlands and global warming.

If all the wetlands on the planet released the carbon they hold, it would contribute powerfully to the climate-warming greenhouse effect, said Paulo Teixeira, coordinator³ of the Pantanal Regional Environment Program in Brazil.

Wetlands are not just swamps: they also include marshes⁴, peat bogs⁵, river deltas⁶, mangroves, tundra⁷, lagoons⁸ and river flood plains.

Together they account for 6 percent of Earth's land surface and store 20 percent of its carbon. They also produce 25 percent of the world's food, purify water, recharge aquifers⁹ and act as buffers¹⁰ against violent coastal¹¹ storms.

As the globe warms, water from wetlands is likely to evaporate; rising sea levels could change wetlands' salinity¹² or completely inundate¹³ them.

In addition, northern wetlands, where permanently¹⁴ frozen soil locks up billions of tons of carbon, are most at risk from climate change because warming is forecast to be more extreme at high latitudes¹⁵, said Eugene Turner of Louisiana State University, a participant in the conference.

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