Buffers, sponges and moderators: A film about managing swampy meadows and wetlands

Rivers of Carbon [1] have just released a fantastic new film [2]about the value of swampy meadows in our landscape, and how best to manage them.

The swampy meadow is a riparian system that was very common in upland valleys of southeastern Australia at the time of European contact. It is essentially a floodplain that doesn’t have a continuous channel. As the name ‘swampy’ suggests, the alluvial sediments that make up the landform are regularly saturated, creating conditions that support a dense ‘meadow’ of moisture-loving grasses, sedges and rushes. Some, but not all, swampy meadows contain chains-of-ponds, which are irregularly spaced along the valley floor.

In the face of a changing climate, one that is expected to bring increased extremes in weather patterns, wouldn’t it be nice to have a riparian system you could describe as ‘buffers, sponges and moderators’. The swampy meadow does just that, and is a gem when it comes to bringing resilience to the waterways, farms and wildlife of this dry old continent.

Learn more about swampy meadows in the Rivers of Carbon Fact Sheet [3], or view their film here [2].

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Buffers-sponges-and-moderators-fact-sheet.pdf [4]	915.38 KB