Monitoring Wise Use of Wetlands During Land Conversion for the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands: A Case Study of the Contiguous United States of America (USA)

Wetlands provide the world with important ecosystem services (ES) including carbon (C) storage. The Ramsar Convention (RC) is the only global treaty on wetlands outside of the United Nations (UN) with 172 contracting parties across the world as of 2025. The goals of the convention are to promote the wise use and conservation of wetlands, designation of suitable wetlands as wetlands of international importance, and international cooperation. The problem is that there is no consensus for standard global analysis, which is needed to ensure wetlands conservation. The novelty of this study is the use of methodology that combines satellite-based land cover change analysis with high-resolution spatial databases to help understand the change in wetlands area over time and identify potential hotspots for C loss. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from wetland conversions represent “transboundary” damages. Therefore, C loss from wetlands conversions can be expressed through the “realized” social cost of C (SC-CO2) which is a conservative estimate of the damages caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) release. A case study of the contiguous United States of America (USA) using raster analysis within ArcGIS Pro showed key findings that almost 53% of the wetlands area was lost between 1780 and 1980, starting with 894,880.7 km2 in 1780 and falling to 422,388.2 km2 in 1980. This net loss generated damages including midpoint total soil C loss (6.7 × 1013 kg of C) with associated midpoint “realized” social costs of C (SC-CO2) value of $11.4T (where T = trillion = 1012, $ = United States dollars, USD). Recent analysis of the contiguous USA (2001–2021) revealed wetlands area losses and damages in all states. The newly demonstrated method for rapid monitoring of wetlands changes over time can be integrated into systems for worldwide monitoring to support the RC wise use concept.