Ecosystem services of wetlands

Mitsch, William J.; Bernal, Blanca; Hernández, María E.

doi:10.1080/21513732.2015.1006250

Cited by 299 publications

(163 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…On the other hand, in many poor countries, mostly in central Africa and South-East Asia, the river systems represent the basic resource for every daily action, so not only for specific activities including agriculture and fishing but also for drinking water, cooking, and washing. It is well known that rivers and wetlands provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including environmental, social, economic, and cultural benefits [18,547,548]. Wetlands can reduce the content of nutrients in the water by accumulation in plant tissues, and retaining sediments in the soil, as natural filters that can improve water quality [549][550][551].…”

Section: Tropical Freshwater Habitatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characteristics, Main Impacts, and Stewardship of Natural and Artificial Freshwater Environments: Consequences for Biodiversity Conservation

Cantonati

Poikāne

Pringle

et al. 2020

Water

177

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In this overview (introductory article to a special issue including 14 papers), we consider all main types of natural and artificial inland freshwater habitas (fwh). For each type, we identify the main biodiversity patterns and ecological features, human impacts on the system and environmental issues, and discuss ways to use this information to improve stewardship. Examples of selected key biodiversity/ecological features (habitat type): narrow endemics, sensitive (groundwater and GDEs); crenobionts, LIHRes (springs); unidirectional flow, nutrient spiraling (streams); naturally turbid, floodplains, large-bodied species (large rivers); depth-variation in benthic communities (lakes); endemism and diversity (ancient lakes); threatened, sensitive species (oxbow lakes, SWE); diverse, reduced littoral (reservoirs); cold-adapted species (Boreal and Arctic fwh); endemism, depauperate (Antarctic fwh); flood pulse, intermittent wetlands, biggest river basins (tropical fwh); variable hydrologic regime—periods of drying, flash floods (arid-climate fwh). Selected impacts: eutrophication and other pollution, hydrologic modifications, overexploitation, habitat destruction, invasive species, salinization. Climate change is a threat multiplier, and it is important to quantify resistance, resilience, and recovery to assess the strategic role of the different types of freshwater ecosystems and their value for biodiversity conservation. Effective conservation solutions are dependent on an understanding of connectivity between different freshwater ecosystems (including related terrestrial, coastal and marine systems).

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Section: Tropical Freshwater Habitatsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characteristics, Main Impacts, and Stewardship of Natural and Artificial Freshwater Environments: Consequences for Biodiversity Conservation

Cantonati

Poikāne

Pringle

et al. 2020

Water

177

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“…The resilience of tidal marshes in the face of external disturbances such as sea-level rise (SLR) and coastal development is a concern to coastal managers throughout the world. Tidal marshes provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including nutrient and carbon sequestration, habitat provision, and wave attenuation (Mitsch et al 2015, Barbier 2019. However, natural and anthropogenic processes modify the vertical and lateral dynamics of tidal marshes, through both physical and biogeochemical forcings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding tidal marsh trajectories: evaluation of multiple indicators of marsh persistence

Wasson

Ganju

Defne

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Robust assessments of ecosystem stability are critical for informing conservation and management decisions. Tidal marsh ecosystems provide vital services, yet are globally threatened by anthropogenic alterations to physical and biological processes. A variety of monitoring and modeling approaches have been undertaken to determine which tidal marshes are likely to persist into the future. Here, we conduct the most robust comparison of marsh metrics to date, building on two foundational studies that had previously and independently developed metrics for marsh condition. We characterized pairs of marshes with contrasting trajectories of marsh cover across six regions of the United States, using a combination of remote-sensing and field-based metrics. We also quantified decadal trends in marsh conversion to mudflat/open water at these twelve marshes. Our results suggest that metrics quantifying the distribution of vegetation across an elevational gradient represent the best indicators of marsh trajectories. The unvegetated to vegetated ratio and flood-ebb sediment differential also served as valuable indicators. No single metric universally predicted marsh trajectories, and therefore a more robust approach includes a suite of spatially-integrated, landscape-scale metrics that are mostly obtainable from remote sensing. Data from surface elevation tables and marker horizons revealed that degrading marshes can have higher rates of vertical accretion and elevation gain than more intact counterparts, likely due to longer inundation times potentially combined with internal recycling of material. A high rate of elevation gain relative to local sea-level rise has been considered critical to marsh persistence, but our results suggest that it also may serve as a signature of degradation in marshes that have already begun to deteriorate. This investigation, with rigorous comparison and integration of metrics initially developed independently, tested at a broad geographic scale, provides a model for collaborative science to develop management tools for improving conservation outcomes.

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“…, Mitsch et al. ). Increasing temperatures, altered patterns of precipitation, and related increases in evapotranspiration can result in changes in surface and groundwater levels, where a change in only a few centimeters can result in changes in wetland size, in loss of wetlands to drylands, or in conversions to other wetland types (Schouten et al.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Assessing the relative vulnerabilities of Mid‐Atlantic freshwater wetlands to projected hydrologic changes

et al. 2019

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Wetlands are known to provide a myriad of vital ecosystem functions and services, which may be under threat from a changing climate. However, these effects may not be homogenous across ecosystem functions, wetland types, ecoregions, or meso‐scale watersheds, making broad application of the same management techniques inappropriate. Here, we present a relative wetland vulnerabilities framework, applicable across a range of spatial and temporal scales, to assist in identifying effective and robust management strategies in light of climate change. We deconstruct vulnerability into dimensions of exposure and sensitivity/adaptive capacity, and identify relevant measures of these as they pertain to the attributes of wetland extent and plant community composition. As a test of the framework, we populate it with data for three primary hydrogeomorphic wetland types (riverine, slope, and depression) in seven small watersheds across four ecoregions (Ridge and Valley, Piedmont, Unglaciated Plateau, and Glaciated Plateau) in the Susquehanna River watershed in Pennsylvania. We use data generated from the SRES A2 emissions experiment and MRI‐CGCM2.3.2 climate model as input to the Penn State Integrated Hydrologic Model to simulate future exposure to altered hydrologic conditions in our seven watersheds, as expressed in two hydrologic metrics: % time groundwater levels occur in the upper 30 cm (rooting zone) during the growing season, and median difference between spring and summer mean water levels. We then examine the spatial and temporal scales at which each of the components of vulnerability (exposure and sensitivity/adaptive capacity) shows significant relative differences. Overall, we find that relative differences in exposure persist at a very fine spatial grain, exhibiting high variability even among individual watersheds in a given ecoregion. For temporal scale, we find strong seasonal but weak annual relative differences in exposure resulting from a magnification of summer dry‐down combined with winter and spring wet periods becoming wetter. Sensitivities/adaptive capacities show significant differences among wetland types. A comparison between our anticipated hydrologic alterations under climate change and historical changes in hydrology due to anthropogenic disturbance indicates potential shifts in hydrologic patterns that are far beyond anything that wetland managers have experienced in the past.

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Ecosystem services of wetlands

Cited by 299 publications

References 20 publications

Characteristics, Main Impacts, and Stewardship of Natural and Artificial Freshwater Environments: Consequences for Biodiversity Conservation

Characteristics, Main Impacts, and Stewardship of Natural and Artificial Freshwater Environments: Consequences for Biodiversity Conservation

Understanding tidal marsh trajectories: evaluation of multiple indicators of marsh persistence

Assessing the relative vulnerabilities of Mid‐Atlantic freshwater wetlands to projected hydrologic changes

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