What is the effect of climate change relative to the other pressures affecting wetlands?
The earth is being subjected to many human induced and natural changes, often referred to as global change. These include pressures from increased demand for resources, increase in human consumption patterns leading to land-use and land-cover change (including urbanisation), accelerated rate of anthropogenic nitrogen production/deposition and other air pollutants, accelerated rate of biodiversity loss and climate change (see Figure 1). The impacts of these pressures often lead to increased demand for access to land, water and wildlife resources. The result is a change in the state of the earth’s land surface and in the landscapes where humans live and the goods and services humans receive from the ecosystems, at regional and global scales. The impacts of climate change include changes in atmospheric composition of greenhouse gases (e.g., water vapour, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxides), temperature, precipitation and sea level rise. These can then affect disturbance regimes, such as f
