HOUGHTON – Swamps, bogs and other wetlands don’t always carry the highest price tags on the real estate market, but they are one of the earth’s most valuable ecosystems in terms of organic production.

Wetlands are a keystone ecosystem, according to Michigan Tech professor Rod Chimner, meaning plants there grow extra fast, providing food for the rest of the food chain. Fish, amphibians and birds all live and breed there, too.

One economist, he said, estimated wetlands account of about 40 percent of the world’s economic resources, while taking up just 5 to 6 percent of its surface area.

The cattail marsh, found all over the Copper County, is “one of the most productive ecosystems in the planet,” he said.

Chimner spoke about his work studying and repairing wetlands on Tuesday at the Carnegie Museum in Houghton.

Michigan, he said, is actually blessed with an abundance of wetlands, totaling 17 percent of its surface statewide and more than 40 percent in much of the southern and eastern parts of the U.P. They come in a wide variety of sizes and types, from the marshes to cedar swamps – a favorite home of the popular whitetail deer – to bogs, which defy the high productivity trend but offer unique windows to the past with soil that neither grows nor decomposes.

Tech professor emeritus Bill Rose, who introduced the lecture, said he expected most people in the audience already likely had a relationship with a local wetland or two.

“How can you walk anywhere and not get your feet wet?” he asked.

Chimner said wetlands are also important for water storage and quality, flood mitigation and carbon storage, noting wetlands store more carbon by area than any other ecosystem.

Wetlands have often been disregarded and drained, however, and the U.S. has lost about half of its wetlands.

In Michigan, he said, 10.7 million acres of soggy spots have shrunk to about 6.5 million acres, leaving wetlands scientists with “a lot to restore.”