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Synopsis The highly successful IV International Wetlands Conference was organised by the International Association of Ecology (INTECOL) at Columbus (Ohio, USA) during 13-18 September 1992. This meeting was the largest ever gathering of wetland scientists with over 900 participants from over 50 countries (Mitsch 1993). More than 500 papers were presented in oral and poster sessions, in addition to 13 symposia. Seventy-two symposium papers are being published in a volume by Elsevier Science Publishers (Mitsch 1994), and numerous other contributions will appear in several international journals (e.g. van der Valk, in press; Jorgensen, in prep. Gopal and Mitsch, in prep.). The working group on wetlands of the Societas Internationalis Limnologiae (SIL), which cosponsored the Conference, also planned to publish a selection of papers from the conference in book form. For several reasons, however, it was decided to publish these papers as a special issue of the International Journal of Ecology and Environmental Sciences. This special issue includes 18 selected papers which cover a wide range of subjects and represent all the continents. Four papers deal with aspects of nutrient dynamics in different wetlands. Szogi and Hudnall report secondary salinization of two wetland soils in Louisiana due to discharge from a permanent groundwater table. Novak and Burras observe that summer storms had little influence on soil pore water and stream water chemistry of a South Carolina riverine wetland. Martinelli et al. describe the carbon dynamics of the Amazon floodplain on the basis of carbon isotopic composition whereas Paling and McComb demonstrate the contribution of cyanobacteria to nitrogen supply in an Australian mangrove wetland. This book includes selected papers from the IV International Wetlands Conference held at Columbus (Ohio, USA) during September 1992. The papers cover a wide range of subjects such as nutrient dynamics in different wetlands, ecology and management of wetland biota, remote sensing for mapping wetland hydrology and vegetation, wetland monitoring, and wetland anthropology. These studies are drawn from many different kinds of wetlands (peatlands, marshes, floodplains, mangroves) and come from all continents of the world, especially from the tropics. The volume shall be of interest to all those interested in wetlands scientists, managers, decision makers and conservationists.