The first nationwide remote sensing mapping of wetland distribution was completed recently. The news came on Feb. 19 as research from the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science attached to Beijing Normal University showed there were 308,000 square kilometers of wetlands in China in 2000, 50,800 square kilometers less than that in 1990.

Wetlands, known as the “kidneys of the earth,” are the ecosystem with the richest natural biodiversity on Earth, and are listed as one of the three major ecosystems in the world, together with oceans and forests.

According to Gong Peng, a research fellow with State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, China had little data on the true spatial distribution of wetlands over the past years.

“The completion of the first remote sensing mapping of China’s wetland distribution will lay foundations for the newly launched national survey on wetland and serve as a monitor for the wetland variation,” Gong added.

Research findings show that the largest wetlands in the Northeast and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River right after the New China was founded, namely the large number of wetlands in the Three River Plain and Dongting Lake area, have been transformed into farmland. While in the developed areas of the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, many wetlands have been directly turned into construction land.

The natural wetlands provide a habitat for large amounts of microorganisms, hygrophilous vegetation, fish and wild birds, and thus are a rich gene database for species. A loss of natural wetlands means a loss of species and a deprivation of the above-mentioned ecological functions.

By People's Daily Online