Today, February 2, 2024, is celebrating World Wetlands Day! Wetlands are an incredible environmental resource and provide diverse, invaluable benefits: temperature regulation, keystone species habitat, storm surge insulation, and massive amounts of carbon sequestration in soil and plant biomass.

In honor of wetlands and the work IRIS affiliates do with this important ecosystems, we’re re-sharing an article from UGA’s College of Engineering originally shared in March 2021. This piece profiled the work of Associate Professor of Engineering S. Sonny Kim, who has been working to provide a more comprehensive assessment of carbon sequestration in marshes.

“Coastal salt marshes protect us from hurricanes and floods and provide critical habitats for fish, shellfish, and bird nurseries,” Kim stated in the article. “But salt marshes face multiple threats, including sea level rise, which could dramatically reduce the amount of carbon stored in these vital ecosystems. Understanding the amount of carbon stored in soils is critical to understanding salt marsh vulnerability.”

Read the full article here, written by Mike Wooten.

Featured image: S. Sonny Kim (far right), an associate professor in the UGA College of Engineering, and his colleagues sample salt marsh soils at Tybee Island in 2018.