Indictors of wetland health improve following small-scale ecological restoration on private land

Bentley, Shannon; Tomscha, Stephanie A.; Deslippe, Julie R.

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155760

Cited by 11 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…There are many different definitions for ecosystem health, the most widely accepted of which says that a healthy ecosystem has the ability to maintain its structure and function over time in the face of external stress [7,8]. Various indicators have been proposed to quantify wetland health [9,10]. Biological indicators including species, communities, and even biological processes are highly emphasized in current methods for ecosystem health assessment [11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comprehensive Multi-Metric Index for Health Assessment of the Poyang Lake Wetland

Yang,

Zhong,

Xia

et al. 2023

Remote Sensing

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The Poyang Lake wetland is home to many unique and threatened species. However, it has been severely degraded in recent decades due to the joint effects of human influence and climate change. Here we establish a wetland health index (WHI) for Poyang Lake, which considers five types of attributes (biological, water quality, sediment, land use and remote sensing, and socio-economic attributes) of the wetland to evaluate wetland conditions. Forty-nine variables across five categories were assembled as candidate metrics for the WHI through field surveys conducted in 2019 at 30 sample sites. Principal component analyses were performed to identify the most important variables in each of the five categories as the primary metrics of each index category (e.g., biological index). Eighteen variables were finally selected from the five categories to construct the WHI. The WHI scores varied from 0.34 to 0.80 at the 30 sample sites, with a mean of 0.55. The Poyang Lake wetland is generally in fair condition according to our WHI scores. Sample sites where connected rivers flow into the lake were assessed to be in a poor condition, highlighting the importance of reducing pollution input from rivers for wetland conservation. Scores of individual indices of the five categories were not highly correlated (0.29 ≤ pairwise Spearman’s r ≤ 0.69), suggesting that information provided by each index is different and might be complementary. The composite WHI as well as the individual category indices can provide comprehensive information on wetland conditions that would facilitate the development of more targeted and effective strategies for wetland management.

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