Each year World Wetlands Day is celebrated on February 2nd. So what is World Wetlands Day and why should we care about wetlands anyway?

In a sense wetlands are wet land, but some wetlands are not just land and water but ice and land. That means wetlands are marshes and swamps, shallow lakes, coasts, estuaries, floodplains, reefs and human-made wetlands such as rice-fields and more.

Photo Credit: Thomas Schneditz, The Amphibious Bistort (Polygonum amphibium) in the Austrian Ramsar site Sablatnigmoor, 2004

Wetlands are important because no other type of ecosystem is as important to millions of migratory birds, fish, amphibians, insects, plants, trees and therefore humans too. They provide food and water, control floods, stabilize shorelines, mitigate climate change and are home to a wide range of biodiversity.

Photo Credit: Tobias Salathé, Bassin du Drugeon Ramsar site in France, 2003

That means stronger, preserved wetlands could have lessened the effects of Hurricane Katrina, acted as a buffer between the storm and Gulf Coast communities like New Orleans and weakened that hurricane as a storm in the first place.

Read Katrina Victims Could Sue Over Global Warming

Wetlands and Forests is the theme for World Wetlands Day 2011, especially chosen because 2011 is the UN International Year of Forests. This year’s World Wetlands Day slogan is simple – Forests for water and wetlands – allowing us to look at the ‘big picture’ of forests in our lives.

Photo Credit: Hassan Zaki, WWF/Pakistan, Broghil Lake in northern Pakistan, with the Hindu Raj Cordillera behind

February 2nd marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands in 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Each year since 1997, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and groups of citizens at all levels of the community have taken advantage of the opportunity to undertake actions aimed at raising public awareness of wetland values and benefits in general and the Ramsar Convention in particular.

For more info on WWD, wetlands and how you can celebrate visit ramsar.org