About this Research Topic

Background

Wetland ecosystems, normally located in the transition zone between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, offer vital ecosystem services such as water conservation, water quality improvement, flood mitigation, climate regulation, and habitat provision. These functions are essential for protecting and maintaining biodiversity.

Due to the interactive influences of global climate change and human activities, the degradation of natural wetlands has become a pressing worldwide issue. More than 35% of wetlands have been degraded and lost globally between 1970-2015 and the loss rate has been accelerating annually since 2000. Consequently, wetland conservation and restoration have become a pressing matter for environmentalists, governments, and non-governmental organizations worldwide. Plants, as the main source of net primary production, play a crucial role in water purification, flood and disaster prevention, and water regulation and storage. Nonetheless, due to the lack of detailed restoration examples and limited data, current research has not clearly explained how vegetation restoration could be properly implemented and its importance in wetland ecological engineering.

Therefore, this research topic aims to compile the latest research on wetland vegetation restoration to better understand restoration techniques for various degraded wetland types. We would like to address these issues in an interdisciplinary manner, to encourage discussion of the response of plants in wetlands to environmental stressors and their relationship with ecosystem function restoration. In addition, we hope to improve the interactive research between seed science and wetland ecology, to explore how the seed bank can be used in different wetland restoration approaches.

Topics are welcomed, but are not limited to the following:
• Response of wetland plants to environmental stresses.
• Variation of plant functional traits across different wetland environmental gradients.
• Adaptive management and application strategies for wetland plants.
• Vegetation restoration techniques within the field of wetland ecological engineering.

Keywords: wetland restoration, wetland vegetation, ecological engineering, functional traits, environmental stress

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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