Wetlands are a critical component of our environment and are thought off as being among the most productive ecosystems in the world. Wetlands are defined as geographical areas where water covers or overly saturates the soil during the majority of growing seasons (CZM). They vary based on their appearances and locations which are greatly influenced by regional and soil divergence such as topography, climate, water chemistry, vegetation as well as human degradation (CZM).
Wetlands are identified based on three major attributes: the constant availability of water (hydrology), the presence of specially adapted plants (hydrophytes) and the developmental condition of the soil (hydric) (CZM). Wetlands, which consists of a variety of natural systems such as marshes, wet meadows, bogs and swamps all support both aquatics as well as terrestrial life and are often classified as being tidally influenced wetlands or non-tidal wetlands(CZM). United States Coastal wetlands are very prevalent along the Atlantic, Gulf or Atlantics coastlines while non-tidal as known as inlands are found along rivers and stream in floodplains mostly dominated by herbaceous plant species (CZM).
In the 1600,s which marked the beginning of colonial era, it was estimated that 220 million acres of wetlands which are now considered the lower 48 states in the United States existed. Forwarding 400 years later, the United States has now lost more than half of its originals wetlands and the resources which comes along with it. Between the years of 1932 to 2000, the state of Louisiana accounted for 80 % percent of the wetland loss in the United States alone with approximately 2,000 square miles loss to the Gulf of Mexico (Tibbett’s, 2006). It is determined that if no dr...
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...and, the beaches are vulnerable to erosion caused by normal wind and wave energy and especially during more severe events such as hurricanes and storm surges (LSU).
Works Cited
New England Wetlands: Ecology, Functions, and Degradation Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Agency. Mass,gov. Web. 11 Apr. 2012. http://www.mass.gov/czm/wanewet.htm.
http://www.lsuagcenter.com/en/our_offices/departments/SPESS/Coastal+Plants/coastal_plants_breeding/
Howes, N. C., FitzGerald, D. M., Hughes, Z. J., Georgiou, I. Y., Kulp, M. A., Miner, M. D., . . . Barras, J. A. (2010). Hurricane-induced failure of low salinity wetlands.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(32), 14014-14019
Tibbetts, J. (2006). Louisiana’s wetlands: A lesson in nature appreciation. Environmental Health Perspectives, 114(1), A40.
I live in Houma, Louisiana so I have tons of experience with the bayou region of South Louisiana. Everywhere I look in Houma there is a bayou, which is a good and bad thing. With a bayou comes many great things such as Egrets, Spanish Moss, etc. The bad thing about seeing many bayous is that it is a constant reminder that one day, Houma might be a part of the Gulf of Mexico. Also my dad’s side of the family is from Chauvin and Golden Meadow which is not too far from where the real damage of eroding wetlands is. I go down to Chauvin sometimes to visit my Nanny and her husband. I always see houses on stilts because of possible flooding that could come if a hurricane passes through. One of the issues that Mike Tidwell caught my interest was that the wildlife in bayous will one day be diminished into smaller numbers. That is because the eroding land causes brown shrimp, crabs, and other seafood to die out. Many residents in South Louisiana make a living off of seafood so to have most of that industry die out will hurt the economy of South Louisiana. I just found this issue very interesting.
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.
Office of Water (2006) Wetlands: Protecting Life and Property from Flooding, Washington: Environmental Protection Agency
Authorities at LSU's Hurricane Center and Water Resources Research Institute, and US Army Corps of Engineers lead a discussion of how Louisiana's coastal region is doomed to storm surges. A case in point is the deterioration of the Mississippi Delta, a triangular-shaped deposition of sediment, which works to mitigate flooding and damage caused by storm surges. In fact, every four miles of the delta could knock down a storm surge by one foot. Unfortunately, some areas of the delta like Port Fouchon are losing 40 to 50 feet of land per year. By 2090, experts at LSU have postulated that the delta will be gone - vulnerably leaving New Orleans on the sea. Aside from the delta, barrier islands and marshes are the only other two natural entities which could mitigate a storm surge. The barrier islands' black mangrove trees and the marshes' tall grasses interfere with incoming gulf currents. However, just like the Mississippi Delta, these natural entities are also eroding (Fischetti, 2001).
Maintaining ecological diversity is necessary for the survival of a biological community. In the United States, American citizens are on the verge of irrevocably damaging one of the country's most unique and diverse treasures - the Florida Everglades. This national park is now the only remaining patch of a river that used to span 120 miles from Lake Okeechobee to the Florida Bay. Dikes and levees created by the Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1940's drained this river to reduce flooding and increase useable water for the development of the region. This major diversion of water lead to a trickle down effect causing the continual decline of the environmental state of the Everglades. Since then, debates over the Everglades' future have silently raged on for years about how, why, and when the restoration will begin. This ongoing, but virtually unproductive effort has cost taxpayers a great deal without any apparent benefits. Recently, this debate has been amplified by the voices of the sugar industry in Florida, which was attacked for its major contribution to pollution of the Everglades. Now debates rage on with a new effort called the Restudy. Backed by the Army Corps of Engineers, this effort would change the flow of the Everglades, potentially restoring it into the viable community of life that it used to be. The question now is, will this latest attempt to restore the Everglades ever be realized (thus ending the cyclic Everglades debate) or will it simply add up to one more notch on the bedpost of inadequate and failed attempts to save this national treasure. The world is watching to see how the United States will handle this unprecedented cleanup.
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
According to Are the Everglades Forever?, the Florida Everglades creates park and tourism jobs for people. It also provides a water supply for South Florida cities and agriculture to continue running (3). "One out of every three Floridians (7 million people) rely on the Everglades for their water supply" according to "The Everglades: Quick facts". The article Wetlands and Habitat Loss states that "Wetlands serve as a natural buffer zone against storms and hurricanes, slowing down the storms and reducing their force before they move inland" (Mao 3). This means that the Everglades has a big impact on humans because it provides a much needed water supply to humans, creates more opportunities for jobs, and it makes storms and hurricanes less dangerous making areas near it more
Though it is not just animals ruining the environment, human activities, such as agriculture, industrialization and development has been playing a crucial role in the mass destruction. Wetlands are drained and filled in to provide more opportunities for residential and industrial development. It's also replaced and used for dumping grounds for waste. Even though attitudes about wetlands have changed, over the recent years, since they provide us protection from storms and hurricanes. The value of many wetlands are degrading because of the
Abiotic factors are things that are nonliving that influence an environment and it's inhabitants. Some of the abiotic factors that are attributed to coastal erosion in Louisiana are hurricanes, tropical storms, elevation, sunlight, overnutrition, sea-level rise, and deposition. Hurricanes bring about larger waves which cause dune erosion or beach erosion (Clark et al., 1998). This is significant because beaches and/or the dunes of the beach serve as buffers to the coastline and the ecosystem. As the beach or dunes recede from the erosion caused by these large waves and an increased sea-level the flora and fauna that help sustain the area die off or retreat to a more habitable zone leaving the wetlands in a critical state often resulting in a total loss of the area (Stockdon et al., 2012). Due to the nature of the Gulf of Mexico large destructive storms such as hurricanes or tropica...
This is a result from the new levee system. This system prevents the natural ways of sediment re-depositing along the riverbank and wetlands. The levees lead the sediment to deposit off the continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico. (15) This adds to the loss of wetlands along the coast. Wetlands are important to the economy in more than one way. They serve as homes for fish which fishermen catch then sell and they protect the mainland from getting the full effect of storm surge during a hurricane. “Every 2.7 miles of wetlands absorbs one foot of storm surge” (1.2). Without wetlands and barrier islands working as a barrier, the mainland could experience even more damage during
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.
The study area consisted of Latah and Benewoh in Idaho, USA. The research used a total of 105 sites to collect data; ranking the areas from lowest to highest elevation. The methods implemented in this research consisted of wetland sampling, mail survey and habitat modelling. The combined results allowed for better insight for the conservation of these species. The first section of the experiment consist...
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 ...
Observational records indicate that sea level has already risen between 10 and 25 cm globally over the past 100 years. In addition, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has projected a sea-level rise of 15-95 cm as a consequence of global warming. Sea-level rise will also increase the depth of coastal waters and increase inland and upstream salinity intrusion, both of which affect fresh and brackish water wetlands. Sea-level rise has the potential for increasing the severity of storm surges, particularly in areas where coastal habitats and barrier shorelines are rapidly deteriorating. These direct consequences of global- and regional-scale changes will increase the vulnerability of coastal wetlands which are already heavily impacted by human activities.