The Effects Of Ecosystems

Giving full credit to restricting the Mississippi River as the culprit for loss of wetlands is not accurate. The booming oil and gas exploration of the 1970’s and 1980’s merits a name on the marquee as well. The pipelines and canals used to transport the resources to the outside world placed a great deal of stress on the fragile wetlands. Erosion from the barges in and out of the marshes as well as the salt water allowed into the fresh water, providing a precarious habitat for fresh water species – flora and fauna alike. Plants provide root systems to hold soil in place. Fish and fowl provide an economy for the area. Enter

Wetlands provide fish and wildlife habitat. It supplies food water, along with areas that can be used for nesting or resting. Wetlands also act as a aquifer recharge and discharge area. They are able to recharge groundwater or excess groundwater is able to discharge into the wetland. Wetlands act as flood storage when rainfall and snowmelt leave an excess of water around and no place to go.

If the government designates certain areas within a community to be "wetlands," and therefore illegal to build upon, what happens to land not classified as "wetlands" within the community?

Based on research completed by University of Minnesota soil scientists, the state mandates that every wetland should be protected by a 50-foot buffer zone. The City of Lilliput, a rural town located 30 miles north of St. Cloud, Minnesota, increased the buffer zone to150 feet in1990 within their municipality. The rationale behind Lilliput’s increase was because the town is zoned for predominantly rural uses, i.e. farming and cattle ranching. Due to the animal wasted and farmers’ use of pesticides on their crops, the Town Council felt that increasing the buffer around surrounding wetlands would better protect it from these sources of contamination than would the state minimum of 50

Chesapeake Bay population growth many different species of plants in the watershed that it come from freshwater flow (Magnien 1992). The one species plant found in Chesapeake is Cattails plant; often it found specie in northern North America a variety in wetlands habitats like lake or river. (Bo Zhang 2010). Soil is mineral and organic fragment with water. The plants need all of these to healthy growth. When the space of ground between soil and water if these are quantity low or high the concentration of water for the plants. The research to compare Cattails in two different locations; one location had dry soil and second location had wet soil. This research to find which one is quantity for Cattails growth in dry or wet soils. The hypothesis

Louisiana’s Gulf Coast is eroding into the sea, and by 2100 most of Southeast Louisiana could be completely underwater. Not only does this threaten human and animal habitats, but also the energy, shipping, fishing, and tourist industries that have made this region of the U.S. a valuable part of the national economy (Marshall, 2014). In the past 200 years, half of the nation’s wetland habitats have been lost due to natural and manmade processes. Louisiana’s wetlands make up 40 percent of the total wetlands in the continental United States. 80 percent of losses, nationally, are of Louisiana’s coast (Williams).

A major function of wetlands is that they naturally clean the table waters. With the use of microorganisms it is possible to naturally clean the water supply much better than many water purification plants. A benefit of purifying water with the use of wetlands is that not only does it save the taxpayers money but it also saves the environment from the pollution that a water purification plant would produce. Another function of wetlands is its storage ability. In the event of a large storm or heavy rain wetlands can store the floodwaters so that they do not over run the near by area. To reduce the effects of flooding wetlands are able to store "stormwater and gradually returning it to surface flow, reducing the effects of erosion by stabilizing soils, and dampening the effects of wave action". M. Dennison et.al. 1993. Wetlands also provide a feeding ground and habitat to many fish, waterfowl and other wildlife. Many endangered birds nest and breed on the shores of wetlands and these habitats are crucial for their survival. The destruction of wetlands has become a major problem, especially in California.

One of the most important things that wetlands can do is improve our water quality. With the increasing usage of pesticides in farming and other pollutants that get spread around, most of these chemicals end up in our water supply from runoff. When a lake has wetlands at or near its borders, it tends to be cleaner and more protected from pollutants. Groundwater also benefits from wetlands, as the plants use the extra nitrogen from the runoff. In Iowa, nitrogen is the most common pollutant in out drinking water (Iowa Wetlands). In one study, it was found that “it

These wetlands support a wide variety of life; it has the ability to control flood waters and protect them from those dangers. The loss of wetlands would put humans at risk, because wetlands serve as a natural buffer-zone against storms and hurricanes, slowing down storms and reducing their force before they move inward. They act as a filter by cleaning and restoring the quality of the water that is used daily in Florida. “One out of every three Floridians (7 million people) rely on the Everglades for their water supply” (The Everglades: Quick facts). Florida’s Everglades also provide a source of livelihood, as there are specific centers for hunting, fishing, and recreation.

It also details conservative techniques which can be used to preserve the wetlands in Eastern South Dakota. The USDA in 2007 reported that during 2006-2007, South Dakota sought a 16 percent increase in acres of corn planted for the production of ethanol (quoted in Bouchard 2007, 59). Consequently, an increase in corn production could predict a scenario where wetlands begin to be used for agricultural purposes. The purpose of the wetlands has changed which will have a positive and negative effect on the economy and the environment. Environmentally, ecosystems are destroyed, while there is economic growth. The environmental and economic decisions on the wetlands change its purpose – demonstrating that the landscape is simply powerful because it can be

The Long Term Ecological Research program (LTER) is the largest ecological network founded in the United States. It is an interdisciplinary group that provides the community with researches and long-term datasets to understand the diversity of ecosystems. Based on the variety of information this group of scientists collect around the world and make available for us to know, as the video addressing ecological challenges, we can debate different aspects concerning urban and natural environments. The video tells us that because our environment is a very complex system, we have to learn how to manage it well to protect it and sustain our society. In the natural environment, old forests store more carbon by a slowing the release of this gas back

Across all projects, the first step in tidal wetland restoration is almost always to create a “restoration site template” that will form the basis of the entire project. Experts believe that “restoring the physical integrity of the tidal wetland offers the best opportunity of restoring ecologic integrity” (Faber “Design” 17). How the template is formed will ultimately dictate what the final wetland will look like. Construction of the wetland base may require either excavation or fill depending on the site conditions. Some sites, like the Ballona Wetlands, have been filled with a massive layer of dirt, and in these cases, the site will need to be excavated back down to the bottom of the root zone so that natural sedimentation processes

Wetland soils are extremely varied. They are found from the tropics to the subarctic. They can be seasonal or year-round, freshwater or saltwater, organic or mineral. The one thing that all of them 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 physics, chemistry, and biota. However, over the past century more than half of all the wetlands in the United States has been drained for agriculture and other uses such as construction. When the soils are drained the physics, chemistry, and biota are drastically changed. This paper is an attempt to

4. Dried leaves were retrieved and weighed. The total tissue loss from initial weight before submersion until now was recorded. Class inputs data and a class mean and standard deviation of tissue loss/ day was gathered for both wetlands for each species

I decided to test the ecological status of the wetland by gathering samples from the wetland and testing it for various aspects in the water and the plants that are found within the area.