Microbiology of wetlands

INTRODUCTION Wetlands are ecologically as well as economically important systems due to their high productivity, their nutrient (re)cycling capacities, and their prominent contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Being on the transition between terrestrial and—aquatic ecosystems, wetlands are buffers for terrestrial run off thereby preventing eutrophication of inland as well as coastal waters. The close proximity of oxic–anoxic conditions, often created by wetland plant roots, facilitates the simultaneous activity of aerobic as well as anaerobic microbial communities. Input of nutrients and fast recycling due to active aerobes and anaerobes makes these systems highly productive and therefore attractive for humans as well as many other organisms. Wetlands globally are under high pressure due to anthropogenic activities as well as climate change. Changes of land-use as well as altered hydrology due to climate change will lead to disturbance and loss of these habitats. However, the diversity and functioning of microbial communities in wetland systems is highly underexplored in comparison to soils and aquatic ecosystems. The special issue in Frontiers in Terrestrial Microbiology offers the collection of 4 review articles and 14 original research papers, which contribute to the current knowledge on the microbiology of wetlands and discuss the gaps therein to be assessed in future wetland research. Notably, these studies address a wide variety of wetland types including rice paddies (Alam and Jia, 2012; Conrad et al., 2012), acidic Sphagnum-dominated peatlands (Bragina et al., 2011; Ivanova and Dedysh, 2012; Kolb and Horn, 2012; Preston et al., 2012; Putkinen et al., 2012; Sun et al., 2012), riparian wetlands (Wang et al., 2012), black mangroves (Laanbroek et al., 2012), superficial aquatic sediments (Gu et al., 2012), salt marshes (Irvine et al., 2012; Lovell and Davis, 2012), and littoral boreal wetlands (Siljanen et al., 2012).