How much of the world is covered in wetlands?

How much of the world is covered in wetlands?

7 percent
Developed by the World Wildlife Fund and the University of Kassel in Germany, the Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD) hosted on Resource Watch shows the location and type of 10 million square kilometers of wetlands, which cover about 7 percent of the earth’s surface.

What percentage of land is wetlands?

Wetlands currently cover 5.5 percent of the land in the 48 contiguous states. An estimated 95 percent of these wetlands are freshwater; the rest are marine or estuarine.

Are wetlands all over the world?

Wetlands are found in almost every region of the world and are considered the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems. They provide habitat for a great number of water and land species. Types of wetlands include swamps, bogs, marshes and estuaries.

What is the largest marshland in the world?

At more than 42 million acres, the Pantanal is the largest tropical wetland and one of the most pristine in the world. It sprawls across three South American countries—Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay—and supports millions of people there, as well as communities in the lower Rio de la Plata Basin.

What percentage of Earth is covered with land?

Seen from space, the majority of the Earth’s surface is covered by oceans – that makes up 71% of the surface of the Earth, with the remaining 29% for land.

How much of the earth’s surface is covered with water?

97% of the earth’s water is in the oceans. Approximately 71% of the earth’s surface is covered by water. The oceans and the seas account for 97%.

Where are the marshlands in Iraq and Iran?

The Mesopotamian Marshlands of southern Iraq and Iran, found at the confluence of the historic Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, were 15,000–20,000 km 2 in area as recently as the early 1970s but were drained and diked, especially in the 1990s, to less than 10% of that extent by 2000.

How are marshlands being transformed into fish ponds?

Marshlands have been transformed into fish ponds (today ∼4000 ha), and comprehensive drainage systems have been put in place to increase the proportion of arable land (Jakovljević et al. 1997). William J. Mitsch, in Encyclopedia of Biodiversity (Second Edition), 2013