Introduction:
Wetland soils are widely diverse. They are found from the arctic to the tropics. They can be mineral or organic, seasonal or year-round, marine or freshwater. The one thing they all have in common is that, for at least part of the year, they are saturated with water. This saturation has a significant impact on the soil's characteristics such as the biota, chemistry, and physics. However, over the past century more than half of all the wetlands in the United States have been drained for agriculture and other uses such as construction. When the soils are drained the characteristics are drastically changed. This paper is an attempt to describe the changes in artificially drained soils and to consider a few of the consequences of these changes.
Body:
The physical properties of saturated soils vary somewhat from wetland to wetland but are characterized by certain processes. One is the interaction of the soil with the watertable. Three patterns of possible groundwater flow have been considered: water could flow into the saturated areas from the surrounding area (discharge), making the saturated area the focal point; water could flow through swamps because of local relief (flow-through); or water could flow from the saturated zone into surrounding areas (recharge) possibly due to differential water use by plant communities or pumping (Crownover et al, 1995). There can also be vertical exchange of water between the groundwater and saturated soil. For example, capillary effects pull water upward into the soil from the water table. Besides the vertical and horizontal flow of water, the area of the soil taken up by water is important. Wetland soils are either saturated or nearly saturated so that much of the pore space is...
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The first mitigation banking guidance was released in 1995 by the EPA and Corps of Engineers. The most recent wetland mitigation banking guidance was released in 2008. The idea behind both wetland mitigation banking and conservation banking is to provide compensation for unavoidable impacts to resources prior to the environmental impact taking place (FWS, 2003). Based on the rules set forth in section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act and section 404 of the Clean Water Act, wetland impacts are reduced by using the following sequence of steps: avoiding impacts, minimizing impacts, and as a last resort, mitigating for impacts. Although the Corps has enforced a mitigation policy to reg...
...n, the Louisiana wetlands are an extremely valuable asset to the State of Louisiana and the United States. The continual loss of Louisiana wetlands has the potential to have an immensely negative effect on the economy at a state and national level. Over 2 million people live in the Louisiana coastal parishes (Field et al., 1991). The majority of people living on the Louisiana coast make their living from things that are directly related to the wetlands. The Louisiana wetlands make up the largest wetland community in America and is being lost at a rate greater than the other wetland communities in the country. The suggested strategies that are being taken into consideration could be helpful but it seems that the State of Louisiana is not as concerned as it should be given the future consequences and much like climate change coastal erosion is not being taken serious.
DUI’s vision is, “…wetlands sufficient to fill the skies with waterfowl today, tomorrow and forever.” The site’s main focus stays true to DUI’s vision; protecting important waterfow...
As global temperatures and ocean levels rise, the water levels of the Great Lakes continues to fall. As the lakes hit their all time lowest level in global history in 2012, society remains ignorant to the imposing doom that lurks ahead. Since the Great Lakes make up the largest group of fresh water lakes on Earth and are responsible for approximately 21% of the Earth’s fresh water supply, this issue is becoming one of the largest environmental and economical issues our modern world faces. The effects of this issue include destroying animal habitats and a major economic market; shipping. Water levels in the Great Lakes have been dropping for the past fourteen years, but it wasn’t until boats were scraping the bottom of Lake Huron that people began to take notice. This terrible environmental issue has been dubbed a long term cycle of over evaporation and not enough precipitation to replenish the Lakes. Keith Kompoltowicz, chief of watershed hydrology for the United States Army Corps of Engineers in Detroit has been monitoring this issue for a decade and has made startling discoveries, such as in 2012, he discovered Lake Michigan and Lake Huron’s water levels only rose four inches after winter, whereas the Lakes have been regularly recorded as gaining a foot of water after the winter season had ended. This amount of water added is not enough to maintain a proper water level during the dry, hot summer seasons that evaporate much water from the Great Lakes. While some scientists say that this is just a cycle that will adjust itself naturally, most experts that have been studying this phenomenon, such as Kompoltwicz, would agree that the issue has gone to far
The Everglades, classified as a wetland or a "transition zone" can support plant and animal life unlike any other place. Wetlands are an important resource for endangered species and "that more than one third of the United States' threatened and endangered species live only in wetlands." Says Elaine Mao, the author of Wetlands and Habitat Loss. People have started to notice the importance and the role of wetlands like the Everglades and how they are valuable and essential for ecosystems to live. Wetlands provide so many kinds of plants, mammals, reptiles, birds, and
The information for the drainage loads, exports and concentration of P were obtained from North Temperate Lakes Long-term Ecological Research (NTL-LTER) program, US Geological Survey and Wisconsin DNR, creating with the information time series. For the loads to the La...
A huge array of plants and animals surrounds you. You take a deep breath inhaling the magnificent scents of the blooming flowers and marshy wetland. Birds darken the sky as they fly overhead and crocodiles lay resting in the sawgrass. Animals live in harmony with each other everday.This place although seems like a fairytale is actually very similar to a well-known place called the Florida Everglades, a subtropical wetland ecosystem with an amazing biodiversity. However, this ecosystem is falling apart due to a variety of reasons. For example, snakes not native to this wetland are introduced threatening this ecosystem's food web. The Florida Everglades is a wetland worth preserving though, because it provides a habitat for wildlife, essentially supports the economy of the United States, and humans benefit from this ecosystem.
This paper introduces the environmental concerns of the loss of coastal wetlands. The paper will discuss the significance of wetlands and the devastation that is occurring because of human activity. Wetlands are an essential element of our environment both ecological and societal; conservation will be essential for the preservation of these precious ecosystems.
To begin with, ever since the beginning of settlement here in 1882 settlers have been thinking about draining the marshland. Ever Since 1905 settlers have been changing the land, they built railroads and dug canals, made storage facilities and altered the regulation of the water flow. A major impact has been made on this park and dramatic change of land. In passage 1 “Past and Present: The Florida Everglades” states, “ As a result, the quantity and diversity of the wetlands’ wildlife decreased and 50%
The Green Valley Ranch Incorporation is a major beef producer attempting to expand its pasture in Central Valley California. The area which they have chosen, Philip’s Creek, is a part of a wetland ecosystem susceptible to seasonal flooding. Therefore, a dike must be built to minimize the damage and ensure adequate grazing areas for the cattle. However, by building the dike, the company is threatening the Patrick’s Marsh Wren, a species dependent upon the wetland ecosystem the company plans to disrupt. The habitats are exemplified in Figure One.
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Composting is the process of biodegrading the waste material in which an enormous number of materials like hydrocarbons, nitrogenous compounds, acids, their derivatives and even other organic and inorganic substances can be remediated from the environment (Finstein et al., 1986). Compost pro...
Economic valuation is an important component of environmental policy, although it is difficult to affix a cost on the environment and ecosystem services, it is a measurement that is relevant to most in society humans. Therefore, economic tools may be useful in reinforcing the importance of maintaining biodiversity and preserving fragile ecosystems.
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