Climate change keeps dominating the headlines, especially here in Southwest Florida, where people feel its effects daily. Droughts, wildfires, and sudden cold snaps have left manatees, fish, and turtles struggling to survive.
But there’s some encouraging news. New research highlights how the Everglades absorbs enough carbon each year to offset about 10 percent of what Florida’s roads pump into the atmosphere. The catch? The Everglades also releases methane, a greenhouse gas that adds complexity to the story.
Restoring the Everglades doesn’t just protect a unique ecosystem. It actively fights the greenhouse gas emissions causing hotter summers, higher seas, and stronger storms. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals that the marshes and mangroves soak up 14 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually. That’s impressive: 10 percent of Florida’s roadway emissions, according to John Kominoski at Florida International University.
Kominoski compares restoring the Everglades to saving for retirement: you don’t notice the impact right away, but over time, the benefits pile up. He’s the lead investigator on the Florida Coastal Everglades Long Term Ecological Research Program, backed by federal support. “Climate mitigation and sequestration isn’t just local,” he says. “It matters everywhere and, over the years, delivers outsized benefits.”
Between 2003 and 2020, Everglades’ carbon sequestration jumped by 18 percent. This watershed, spanning the Kissimmee River, Lake Okeechobee, sawgrass marshes, and Florida Bay, provides drinking water for millions. The $27 billion restoration effort is enormous, and findings suggest that improved freshwater flows from restoration have boosted the Everglades’ ability to pull carbon from the air. Tiffany Troxler, Kominoski’s colleague, calls it a win-win: “Most of Florida’s drinking water comes from the Everglades. And as a bonus, it’s an effective carbon sink.”
Wetlands hold huge amounts of carbon in their soils, making them a promising solution for tackling emissions from fossil fuels. Scientists from several universities, including Florida International, East Carolina, NASA, and Yale, teamed up for this study. They wanted to see how human actions, rising seas, and storms alter the Everglades’ carbon storage.
Their methods included collecting data from AmeriFlux towers inside Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve. NASA’s aircraft measured atmospheric carbon, while satellites tracked vegetation changes. Combining these observations, researchers built a model to estimate carbon shifts across the region.
The results weren’t simple. While the Everglades acts as a carbon sink, coastal mangroves are even better at trapping carbon than freshwater marshes. The river of grass is a patchwork, including marshes, tree islands, swamps, hammocks rimmed by mangroves, and brackish wetlands.
But here’s the twist: while the Everglades absorbs carbon, it also emits methane, a gas responsible for about 30 percent of global warming since industrialization. Methane traps heat way more effectively than carbon dioxide, especially over the short term.
The study showed that between 2003 and 2020, methane emissions offset increased carbon sequestration in freshwater marshes. Methane canceled out about 82 percent. Mangroves did much better, offsetting only 18 percent. This means freshwater marshes aren’t as efficient in net greenhouse gas removal as mangroves, but restoration still matters.
Kominoski sums it up: “Restoration hydrates the Everglades, which is essential, but it also brings greenhouse gas challenges. The wetlands remove more carbon than they emit overall, yet some areas—especially certain marshes—are hotspots for methane. These ecosystems need ongoing protection, restoration, and management if we want to keep boosting their carbon removal potential. Right now, the Everglades is taking out more carbon than it’s putting into the atmosphere.”
Click here for more information about Everglades National Park.
