Tropical Mountain Wetlands

Water scarcity is an alarming problem in densely populated tropics and subtropics that are located in hydrologically sensitive zones. Mountains will play an increasingly important role in these regions, particularly in sustaining water availability in the future. They are often termed as 'water towers', important for water cycling, and many major rivers of the world originate here. Mountains also support a number of distinctive wetlands such as riparian areas, marshes, peatlands and wet meadows, over short distances as the hydrological characteristics change at small spatial scales. Additionally, varied landforms, biogeochemical environment, slope, elevation and climate gradient also influence mountain wetland characteristics.