Melting Glaciers: Great News for Titanic, Devastating for Wetlands
Overview
This essay is dedicated to the importance of wetlands and the impending danger of rising sea levels due to global warming. Historically we humans have taken for granted the numerous vital roles played by wetlands in our ecosystem and viewed them only as unpleasant and undesirable. So we have destroyed much of our wetlands, and now that we finally see how important they are we are going to lose what little wetlands remain to rising sea levels.
What are wetlands?
Wetlands are, quite simply wet lands. The word “wetlands” is the collective term for marshes, swamps, bogs, and similar areas. Here in Florida, wetlands are quite abundant. They can also be found in nearly every county and climactic zone in the United States. However, more than half of America's wetlands have been destroyed by man and his historically negative view of the vital waters.
In general, wetlands are not very pleasant to humans to be around. Not only do they lack the beauty and grandeur of lakes, oceans and waterfalls, but they are also home to mosquitoes, flies, unpleasant odors and disease. Furthermore, wetlands tend to cover a large area that would be desirable to developers and farmers. Thus, wetlands were popularly and quickly drained and converted to farmlands or filled for housing developments and industrial facilities. Also, flood control levees and navigation channels have prevented fresh water, nutrients and sediment from reaching wetlands. This has converted many to open water. Some wetlands were even used as dumping sites for the disposal of household and industrial wastes!
Today, both scientists and the government recognize the ma...
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..., enhanced sedimentation, and enhanced peat formation. These measures must be taken seriously and immediately before we and our animals are paying the horrible price for our own irresponsibility!
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Resources
Information from the following articles and web sites was used in writing this site:
EPA Global Warming Site http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/
Facts About Wetlands http://www.epa.gov/OWOW/wetlands/
facts.html
GLY 1073 Electronic Tutor http://ess.geology.ufl.edu/
NASA Fact Sheets http://pao.gsfc.nasa.gov/gsfc/service/gallery/
fact_sheets/earthsci/green.htm
Titus, J.G., Sea Level Rise and Wetland Loss: An Overview http://
www.epa.gov/oppeoee1/globalwarming/reports/pubs/
sealevel/index.html
Wetland Processes and Values http://h2osparc.wq.ncsu.edu/info/
wetlands/funval.html
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...
Fifty percent of the original wetlands doesn’t even exist today. The water supply in the Everglades is changing and that has affected the Everglades in many ways. For one, population is decreasing and mankind needs to restore it somehow. Next, the Everglades are in need of some money to do that restoration, but where will they get it from? Last, the water supply is poisoning the humanity around it with much bacteria and many bad and dangerous elements. The Everglades water supply affected it in fixing the Everglades and wildlife.
...oceans. Anthropogenic systems such as the combustion of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution have greatly increased the rate of acidification to levels where negative impacts ensue. Negative impacts occur both to marine organisms that rely on certain water conditions to maintain vital functions and the environment which is damaged by highly acidic waters. There is great variation in the acidity of each of the oceans, differences caused by the chemical composition of the ocean and biogeography. Understanding of the potential impacts of ocean acidification is relatively new to the scientific community and therefore little is known on how to counteract anthropogenic influences. Although reducing the amount of carbon dioxide produced will in turn reduce the lowering of the oceans acidity levels and reduce negative impacts on the environment and marine organisms.
According to the Worldwatch Institute the rapid industrialization has polluted many lakes and streams resulting in chemical pollution and increased algae blooms leaving the water undrinkable. These combined issues are then causing knock on effects to the aquatic life by staving them of oxygen. Many areas are also suffering with an increase in dust storms; these have been a cause of over agricultural use. These increased storms would not cause many problems but now they can ...
Due to the climate change during the Late Archaic period, the water levels rose and the large area became marshland. They once ran from the Kissimmee River in Orlando all the way down to Southern Florida, in the bay (ok 2002). Before development due to the increase in the Florida population, the Everglades were around 5,000,000 acres and covered a third of the state. (ok 2002). However, there are 3,000,000 acres expanding from Lake Okeechobee to the Florida Bay, that are called the ‘Historic Everglades.’ The Everglades are full of fresh water, that moves over blades of sawgrass. Sawgrass is a sedge with spiny-edged leaves (dict. 2002). This gives the large wetlands a ripple effect from far away. Sawgrass is not the only kind of life in the Everglades. The ‘old’ Everglades had an abundance of freshwater sloughs, mangrove swamps, pine rock lands and hardwood hammocks (ok 2002). In figure one, it is shown
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People are responsible for higher carbon dioxide atmosphere emissions, while the Earth is now into the Little Ice Age, or just behind it. These factors together cause many years discussions of the main sources of climate changes and the temperature increasing as a result of human been or natural changes and its consequences; even if its lead to the global warming, or to the Earth’s cooling. In their articles, “Global Warming Is Eroding Glacial Ice” by Andrew C. Revkin and “Global Warming Is Not a Threat to Polar Ice” by Philip Stott, both authors discuss these two theories (Revkin 340; Stott 344). Revkin is right that global warming is taking place. Significant increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is due to human activities combined with natural factors such as volcanic emissions and solar radiation – all together they lead to climate changes and temperatures rising. At the same time, other factors such as deforestation contribute to environmental changes for some glaciers not less than air pollution. However, during global warming not all regions of the planet are affected in the same way, local warming and cooling are both possible during these changes.
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The data we found supported our original water hypothesis. My group and I believed that adding ammonium nitrate into our eco-column would ultimately damage the ecosystems. The increase in levels of minerals from the aquatic ecosystem also indicates that the entire column was being destroyed. Through this experiment, I have learned that too much nutrients and minerals within an ecosystem can be extremely harmful to the wildlife. Throughout this experiment the water in our eco column began to turn yellow because of a surplus of nitrogen and phosphorous in the eco-column. In some of the eco-columns of the other groups in the classroom, they had eutrophication in the early stages of their eco-column which resulted in the death of many of their
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.
In the past hundred years, the human race has expanded almost everything in the United States of America, such as our agriculture practices, the size of our cities, and the sheer amount of expansion in business and it has affected one group of animals in particular, waterfowl. Due to these advancements, the human race has caused the climate to change, and according to an research by Jennifer Reilly “Climate change is an global problem that affects all species of waterfowl and the wetlands they inhabit” (Reilly 2017). Humans have impacted the life of waterfowl in such extreme levels of magnitude, that humans have almost become part of waterfowls life. Cites have become almost refuges for geese as mentioned in the study titled Survival
Between 300 and 400 million people worldwide live in areas near wetlands and depend on them. Wetlands are mechanisms for treatment of wastewater are extremely efficient because they absorb chemicals and filter pollutants and sediments. Half the world's wetlands have disappeared due to urbanization and industrial development. The only way to achieve sustainable development and poverty reduction will be through better management of rivers and wetlands, and the land they drain and drain as well as through increased investment in them.
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Founded in 1990, the Little River Wetlands Project is a nonprofit land trust with the goal of restoring and preserving the wetlands in the watershed of the Little ...
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