Abstract
This chapter deals with a largely unrecognised service of wetlands – their role in regulating air temperature through evapotranspiration. We explain quantitatively how solar energy striking the earth’s surface is dissipated by water (expressed in energy units (W m−2)) in three processes: dissolution-precipitation of salts, disintegration-recombination of the water molecule in biological processes and evapotranspiration-condensation. The direct effect of wetlands on regional climate, through reduction of temperature gradients and the role of water vapour and clouds in lowering the passage of solar radiation are then described. We quantify the huge upsurge of sensible heat (warm air) that must have occurred after the drainage of wetlands in the northern hemisphere over the past 260 years. The radiative forcing that was caused by the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the same period (from 1 to 3 W m−2 from 1750 to the present day) is markedly lower than radiative forcing caused by wetland drainage and indeed, is too small to measure. The amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour in atmosphere and their dynamics are compared. We question the meaning of ‘average temperature’ as the criterion of climate change in terms of thermodynamics. We show temperature differences in the present-day cultural landscape, on a clear sunny day, in thermovision pictures: wetlands and forests are upto 20 °C cooler than drained surfaces. We argue that persisting with the dogma of climate change caused by the greenhouse effect alone results in society ignoring the most important functions of natural vegetation, manifest through their direct effect on climate and water cycling. This facilitates further wetland drainage and deforestation. We believe that it is now essential to support and restore natural vegetation structures, like wetlands and forests, in order to make any serious reduction in climate warming.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Anon, (2016). Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved on 17 February, 2016, from http://www.britannica.com/place/Sun
Atkins, P., & de Paula, J. (2010). Physical chemistry (9th ed.). New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.
Cahalan, R.F., Wen, G., Harder, J.W., Pilewskie, P. (2010). Temperature responses to spectral solar variability on decadal time scales. Geophysical Research Letters, 37(7). doi:10.1029/2009GL041898
Climatic Research Unit (CRU). https://crudata.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/
Cooper, J.P. (1975). Photosynthesis and productivity in different environments. London: Cambridge University Press
Dykyjová, D., & Květ, J. (Eds.). (1978). Pond littoral ecosystems, structure and functioning. Ecological Studies 28. Berlin/Heidelberg/New York: Springer.
Earth Science Data Interface (ESDI). http://glcfapp.glcf.umd.edu:8080/esdi/
Esau, I.N., & Lyons, T.J. (2002). Effect of sharp vegetation boundary on the convective atmospheric boundary layer. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 114(1–2), 3–13
Geiger, R., Aron, R.H., & Todhunter, P. (2003). The climate near the ground. Lanham: Rownam & Littlefield.
Gopal, B., Junk, W.J., Davis, J.A. (2000). Biodiversity in wetlands: Assessment, function and conservation (Vol. 1). Leiden: Backhuys Publishers.
Gopal, B., Junk, W.J., Davis, J.A. (2001). Biodiversity in wetlands: assessment, function and conservation (Vol. 2). Leiden: Backhuys Publishers.
Hejný, S., Květ, J., Dykyjová, D. (1981). Survey of biomass and net production of higher plant communities in fishponds. Folia Geobotanica et Phytotaxonomica , 16, 73–94
Hesslerová, P., & Pokorný, J. (2010). Forest clearing, water loss, and land surface heating as development costs. International Journal of Water, 5(4), 401–418
Huryna, H., Brom, J., Pokorný, J. (2014). The importance of wetlands in the energy balance of an agricultural landscape. Wetlands Ecology and Management, 22(4), 363–381
IPCC. (2007). Climate change 2007: The physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. In S. Solomon, D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor, H.L. Miller (Eds.). Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
IPCC. (2013). Climate change 2013: The physical science basis. contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. In T.F. Stocker, D. Qin, G-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex, P.M. Midgley (Eds.). Cambridge/York: Cambridge University Press.
Jones, H.G. (1991). Plants and microclimate: A quantitative approach to environmental plant physiology (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kedziora, A. (2011). Energy balance of ecosystems. In J. Gliński, J. Horabik, J. Lipiec (Eds.), Encyclopedia of agrophysics (pp. 270–274). Dordrecht: Springer.
Kopp, G., Lawrence, G., Rottman, G. (2005). The total irradiance monitor (TIM): Science results. Solar Physics, 230(1), 129–139
Kustas, W.P., Daughtry, C.S.T., van Oevelen, P.J. (1993). Analytical treatment of the relationships between soil heat flux/net radiation ratio and vegetation indices. Remote Sensing of Environment, 46, 319–330
Květ, J., Westlake, D.F., Dykyjová, D., Marshall, E.J.P., Ondok, J.P. (1998). Primary production in wetlands. In D.F. Westlake, J. Květ, A. Szcepaňski (Eds.), The production ecology of wetlands: The IBP synthesis (pp. 78–168). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lotka, A.J. (1922). Contribution to the energetics of evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 8(6), 147–151
Mitsch, W.J., Gosselink, J.G. 2007. Wetlands (4th ed.). Hoboken: Wiley.
Mitsch, W.J., Hernandez, M.I. (2013). Landscape and climate change threats to wetlands of North and Central America. Aquatic Sciences, 75, 133–149.
Myhre, G., Shindell, D., Bréon, F.-M., Collins, W., Fuglestvedt, J., Huang, J., Koch, D., Lamarque, J.-F., Lee, D., Mendoza, B., Nakajima, T., Robock, A., Stephens, G., Takemura T., Zhang, H. (2013). Anthropogenic and natural radiative forcing. In Climate Change 2013: The physical science basis (Contribution of Working Group I to the Ffifth Assessment).
NASA Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) located at USGS/EROS, Sioux Falls, SD. http://lpdaac.usgs.gov
Patten, B.C. (1990). Wetlands and shallow continental waterbodies (Vol. 1). The Hague: SPB Academic Publishing.
Pokorný, J., Květ, J., Rejšková, A., Brom, J. (2010a). Wetlands as energy dissipating systems. Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology, 37, 1299–1305
Pokorný, J., Brom, J., Čermák, J., Hesslerová, P., Huryna, H., Nadezdina, N., Rejšková, A. (2010b). Solar energy dissipation and temperature control by water and plants. International Journal of Water, 5 (4), 311–336
Priest, E. (2014). Magnetohydrodynamics of the Sun. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ripl, W. (1995). Management of water cycle and energy flow for ecosystem control: The energy-temperature reaction (ETR) model. Ecological Modelling, 78(1–2), 61–76
Ripl, W., & Hildmann, C. (2000). Dissolved load transported byrivers as an indicator of landscape sustainability. Ecological Engineering 14, 373–387
Ripl, W. (2003). Water: The bloodstream of the biosphere. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, B358(1440), 1921–1934
Schneider, E.D., & Sagan, D. (2005). Into the cool, energy flow thermodynamics and life. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Willson, R.C., & Hudson, H.S. (1991). The Sun’s luminosity over a complete solar cycle. Nature, 351(6321), 42–44
WMO. (2008). Guide to meteorological instruments and methods of observation. World meteorological organization. No. 8 (7th ed.).
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the EEA grants – Norway grants EHP-CZ02-PDP-1-003
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pokorný, J., Hesslerová, P., Huryna, H., Harper, D. (2016). Indirect and Direct Thermodynamic Effects of Wetland Ecosystems on Climate. In: Vymazal, J. (eds) Natural and Constructed Wetlands. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38927-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38927-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-38926-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-38927-1
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)