![]() Tidal marshes are wet, vegetated areas found along coasts and rivers that are regularly flooded. Tidal flats are shallow, muddy areas that are covered and uncovered by the rise and fall of the tide. The new study, published in Science, takes a look at how the global area of tidal wetlands has changed over the past two decades and what reasons led to these changes.Īccording to the research, “tidal wetlands” consist of Earth’s three intertidal ecosystems: tidal flats, tidal marshes and mangroves. The study’s findings could “allow us to finally scale up local measurements of carbon accumulation to estimate the size of the coastal carbon sink”, a scientist not involved in the study tells Carbon Brief. However, during the same time period, both human-led and natural restoration led to the creation of 9,700km 2 of new tidal wetlands – offsetting 71% of the loss. Indirect factors also played a role, the study says, including sea level rise and coastal processes such as erosion. It finds that a total of 13,700km 2 of tidal wetlands were lost from 1999 to 2019, largely as a result of human activities, including aquaculture, agriculture and urban expansion. The research uses satellite data to monitor three types of tidal ecosystems – tidal flats, tidal marshes and mangroves – from 1999 to 2019. This is equal to an area roughly the size of the Spanish island Mallorca or the Indian state of Goa. ![]() The Earth has lost 4,000 square kilometres (km 2) of its tidal wetlands over the past 20 years, a new study finds. ![]()
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