Wetlands are not isolated patches of marsh or bog—they form sprawling, interconnected landscapes whose benefits to people and the environment have been systematically underestimated. Current methods for assessing what wetlands do—filter water, store carbon, reduce flooding, support wildlife—only measure individual wetland units. But a wetlandscape, the aggregate of many wetlands across a region, provides services that cannot be predicted by simply adding up its parts. A single wetland may supply fish to a local village; the broader wetlandscape can supply food and water to an entire region, including through virtual water embedded in traded crops. Evaporation from a wetlandscape can generate rainfall hundreds of kilometres downwind. These cross-scale effects are almost never accounted for in environmental policy. DOWES will quantify these overlooked services across six under-protected wetlandscapes in Europe and South America. If successful, it will give environmental authorities the tools to expand protection beyond isolated wetland units to the full landscape. The project is primarily applied: its goal is to change how governments map, value, and safeguard wetland ecosystems. The result could be more effective flood management, more accurate climate models, and better regional water security—quietly improving infrastructure and supply chains that depend on healthy landscapes.
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Wetlands are well known to provide a range of provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting ecosystem services. Renowned ecosystem services include biodiversity support, improvement of water quality, flood attenuation, recreation, climate mitigation, coast protection, and guaranteeing food and water security. Yet, the complexity arising from the spatial aggregation of wetland units into wetlandscapes invites a reconsideration of the provision of wetlandscape ecosystem services (WES). Although established guidelines and frameworks exist for accounting and quantifying ecosystem services from wetlands units, the structural, ecological, hydrological, topographical, and geomorphological complexity of wetlandscapes makes the assessment of WES less straightforward. First, WES are not scalable in space or time due to varying ecohydrological conditions and functions. Furthermore, any relationship between WES and the ecosystem services from any of its wetland units may not hold across the global diversity of wetlandscapes. Hence, comparative studies based on the synthesis of contrasting wetlandscapes are fundamental to fostering our comprehension of WES. Ecosystem service assessments of wetlands usually focus on the area of influence of the wetland unit. However, the complexity and extent of wetlandscapes invite exploring potential services beyond their direct area of influence. These services may benefit ecosystems and communities downstream, downwind, and down the chain of products originating in the wetland. For instance, a wetland unit can provide food and fish for the surrounding communities. Instead, its corresponding wetlandscape can give considerable food and water for the region and beyond, directly or through virtual water flows embedded in raw materials and products. Another example is the evaporation from the water surfaces of a wetlandscape, which can provide moisture for precipitation downwind. Studying ecosystem services at the wetlandscape scale can provide a more complete assessment of ecosystem services that would have been overlooked if analyzed at simpler and smaller spatial scales. A complete understanding of WES can also aid the protection, restoration, and management of wetlandscapes. The complexity of wetlandscapes has generally resulted in their partial protection and the partial quantification of WES. We have identified six wetlandscapes not fully protected by the Ramsar Convention or national authorities, with only some of their wetland units being protected. As an interdisciplinary project, DOWES will bring a breakthrough in the quantification and assessment of WES, even beyond their direct area of influence, to provide environmental authorities with the tools and know-how to expand the protection of these valuable ecosystems. The Consortium DOWES comprises six well-known institutions across five countries: 1) the Department of Physical Geography, Stockholm University in Sweden (SU), 2) the French Institute for Research and Development (IRD/LEGOS), 3) the Environmental Change Research Centre of the Department of Geography, University College London in the United Kingdom (UCL), 4) the Department of Science and Agriculture, Food, Environmental and Forestry Technology at the University of Florence (UNIFI) and 5) the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Politecnico di Milano in Italy (POLIMI), and 6) the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development in Brazil (MISD).
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