Wetlands are among the most productive ecosystems on earth, in particular when it comes to long- term storage of carbon. Their unique conditions of saturated soils and vegetation cover have resulted in them playing an important role in the regulation of atmospheric greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. However, wetlands have faced high levels of degradation worldwide, often in the form of conversion into other land types for agricultural or other purposes. This has lead to depletion of their carbon stores and turned many of them into sources of atmospheric CO2 . In light of global efforts to keep global warming to below 2°C, various climate frameworks and goals have been devised both on national and supranational levels. For Sweden, one of these frameworks is the goal of being domestically climate neutral by year 2045. In order to reach this goal, in addition to reduction of CO2 emissions, there is a need for increased uptake of CO2 by natural environments. This study applied various data on carbon sequestration for both natural and restored wetlands to eight selected Swedish counties in order to determine whether a large-scale restoration of these environments could yield results with a notable impact on achieving the neutrality goal. Furthermore, sample financial calculations were made to assess whether this strategy is economically possible and, by some extent, societally acceptable. The study found that the scale to which wetland restoration would have to be implemented for results to have a notable impact on 2045 goals is not achievable financially. The use of wetlands have the potential of being an important tool on a longer timescale due to the time frame needed for wetland restoration and accumulation of soil organic carbon, whereas for increasing uptake of CO2 for the purpose of reaching 2045 goals, they will have a negligible impact. Rather, the study emphasises the need for conservation and management of healthy wetlands, as well as rewetting of drained soils to reduce their CO2 emissions. Keywords: wetland restoration, Swedish climate neutrality goals, soil organic carbon, carbon sequestration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-199320 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Giarimi, Niki |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för naturgeografi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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