Wetlands
By: Jon A. Kusler, William J. Mitsch, and Joseph S. Larson
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- Constant change makes wetlands ecologically rich and diverse as rain forests
- Provides a habitat for many variety of animals and a nesting place for birds
- Have commercial and utilitarian functions
- Are able to limit damaging effects from things such as waves, convey and store floodwaters, trap sediment, and reducing pollution makes them known as "nature's kidneys"
- Rapid disappearance of wetlands is through their valuable feature of ever changing nature
- Wetlands can be found in diverse topographical settings in which they exist near the fresh-water rivers, streams and lakes and their floodplains (called riparian)
- Determining water levels in wetlands are looking at tides, precipitations, activities by humans and other animals
- The anomalous feature of wetlands is the way that short-term destruction like fires, drought, and hurricanes in turns gain the long-term effects
- Wetlands encompass an array of shallow-water and saturated soil environments that have both the characteristics of some terrestrial and aquatic systems
- Can contain species of both aquatic and terrestrial
- Wetlands can serve as reproductive or feeding sites if only it is connected to waterways in which nutrients and sediments are flowing in the water can pass through to allow more productivity
- Barriers can help prevent the plants and animals in the wetland from migrating up and down gentle slopes
- With no space to have movement available, chances of a wetland can disappear
- Decreased sediment from dams and reservoirs along rivers and streams can threaten other wetlands
- Landowners needed to know everything about the rules and conditions when building a road or house to compensate for the losses of wetlands
- Wetland policies are handed down to the legislative to handle rather than scientists
- The bill would allow the compensation for one wetland while preserving another
Wetlands are vital for all life's survival. They are among the world's most productive environment due to its ever changing nature and having relatively high biodiversity. Managing wetlands is very difficult and a big challenge. Wetlands provides many ecological services that makes them important. Some of these services include controlling floods (sponge), cleansing waters (filters pollutants), recharge groundwater, regulate climate, reduce and mitigating damages from storms (absorption of rainfall), etc. These areas also tend to have complex habitats.
I think that protecting and preserving wetlands is a big deal and that these benefits are extremely helpful to everyone. All the things that wetlands can do illustrates that its highly valuable and how we should support it in every possible way. The good thing is that it can remove dirty chemicals from the water supply and produce growth in food supplies for humans. For environments, it can stabilize the levels of water because of all the absorption it takes in to suppress amount of runoffs. Now that I know how severe problems can be when we don't have wetlands, people need to be informed of this issue and take in consideration as these are delicate and may wipe out in years to come.