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What are wetlands? Wetlands, as the name suggests, are wet! They are basically areas of land covered with water either all or only part of the time. Further, wetlands include areas with water of different depths, from water several meters deep to water merely saturating the soil. Even when a wetland appears dry, waterlogged conditions often occur below the surface of the soil. The conditions in a wetland also vary over time, with changes daily, seasonally over a longer time period as wetlands evolve and fill with sediment to eventually become dry land. Wetlands encompass many different habitats including ponds, marshes, swamps, and peat lands.
Wetlands are found along the shorelines of oceans, lakes, rivers and in local depressions. The water in natural wetlands derives from tidal flows, lakes, flooding rivers, or connections to groundwater. The water table in wetlands is at or near the surface, and the land is often covered with shallow water. Wetlands have often been described as the kidneys of the landscape because of the role they play in water and chemical cycles. Wetlands filter out sediment and pollution from the surrounding environment so that the water they discharge is cleaner that which entered the wetland. In this manner, wetlands act as both a sink and source, storing and passing on vital resources to their local environment.
Defining wetlands
the definition for wetlands in the International Convention on Conservation of Wetlands, or the Ramsar Convention. This broadly defines wetlands as "areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres". It also says that wetlands "may incorporate riparian and coastal zones adjacent to the wetlands, and islands or bodies of marine water deeper than six metres at low tide lying within the wetlands". This broad definition means that the Ramsar Convention covers a wide variety of habitat types, including rivers and lakes, coastal lagoons, mangroves, and even coral reefs.
characteristics:
Wetlands are ecosystems typically found on the transition between terrestrial and aquatic systems. In order to be classified as a wetland, an area typically has at least one of the following 3 characteristics: a water table at or near the ground's surface during the growing season (including when the land is covered by shallow water) poorly drained or hydric soils be home to a unique diversity of wildlife and vegetation specifically adapted to thrive in wet environments
Wetlands of Pakistan Pakistan is one of the God gifted countries which abounds in natural resources, beautiful and eye catching. Beside snow covered mountains, green plains, deserts, lakes and the coast line, Pakistan also has an estimated 780,000 ha of wetlands that cover 9.7% of the total surface area of the Pakistan. In excess of 225 significant wetlands sites are on record in the prototype Pakistan Wetlands GIS Database - of which 19 have been internationally recognized by the Ramsar Convention Bureau as being of global importance. The diverse assortment of natural freshwater and marine wetlands that occur within Pakistan support unique combinations of biodiversity. Pakistan's permanent and ephemeral wetlands are globally significant in terms of the intrinsic value of their indigenous biodiversity.
Pakistan possesses a great variety of wetlands distributed throughout the country whose number exceeds over 200 identified wetlands or wetland complexes. The information about these resources is patchy and has not been compiled and updated systematically except documentation of only 48 wetlands in the Asian Directory of Wetlands in 1989.