Bill Nye on wetlands

 

Wetlands restoration video

 

Why are Wetlands Important?

The National Parks Service on Why are Wetlands Important?

Large wetlands

 Where are the great wetlands of the world? 

Mardi Gras Pass

NASA's Earth Observatory celebrated Fat Tuesday with images of some Louisiana wetlands around Mardi Gras Pass. They detail the changing characteristics of the waterways in a meaningful way.

Adaptive design

The latest issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine presents an innovative marsh planting technology/design intended for the wetlands at the ancestral home of the Atakapa Ishak/Chawasha peoples.

Sackett wetlands

Could the Supreme Court decision regarding Sackett v. EPA leave Louisiana's wetlands unprotected? NOLA.com explains their concerns.

Good timing

Mother Nature Network posted an article today about 11 nationally protected wetlands you should know about. It asks, "Did you know that the world's most biologically diverse ecosystems also happen to be some of the most fragile and endangered?" But I trust that our students knew that.

Okefenokee might not be a surprise, but Death Valley will be unexpected for many. In any case, some pleasant wetlands photos without as much talk about the storm protection and shoreline protection that wetlands often provide.

Big storms and watersheds

Big storms don't just cause flash flooding. A new study from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies finds that the biochemistry of watersheds can be dramatically impacted. Building on what the authors call the "pulse-shunt concept," they show that these storms push large quantities of organic material past the watershed's headwaters and further downstream. This results in changes in levels like phytoplankton. Ultimately, they suggest, that it could also change dissolved oxygen levels and water clarity.

Wetlands = clean water

A new paper reveals that isolated wetlands are even more important for water quality than previously understood.

"A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it."

 — Henry David Thoreau

Urban wetlands park

The LA Times has a short story on a site that was a bus parking lot but has just opened as a wetland park. KCET has photos.  Worth a peek, since it seems like a trend. (Mapped)

A Dismal Swamp story

The Home News and Tribune has rediscovered the Dismal Swamp and the people trying to protect it.

Learning amongst the wetlands

The always reliable Pruned looks at the politically connected Sidwell Friends School's constructed wetlands courtyard.

Sea level rise in NJ

The Asbury Park Press focused attention on some of the potential impacts of sea level rise. The reporting cites Cook College alum, John D'Agostino, as well as a CRSSA study:

Another mapping study by the Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis at Rutgers predicted inundation of coastal marshes all along the state's littoral, from the Hackensack River Meadowlands through the Shore's back bays and up the Mullica and Great Egg Harbor rivers. Left to nature's ways, those marshes would gradually migrate landward with sea-level rise, but in many places retreat is blocked by roads, utility lines and other vital infrastructure, D'Agostino said.

Still, you'd be better off checking out the actual studies and papers since the slightly awkward reporting reveals that they might not quite be picking up on some subtleties and caveats that those reports may have built on.

Clarifying wetlands

US wetlands law, with its basis in such diverse language as the Commerce Clause and the Clean Water Act, lacks some clarity. A recent Supreme Court decision helped point out how flawed it could be having the whole thing pinned on the definition of "navigable waterways". A NYTimes editorial this week said that:

This tortured middle way has effectively become the law of the land, and for various reasons — including the need to conduct laborious, case-by-case investigations into hydrological linkages among water bodies — it has led to regulatory paralysis.

They supported the proposed legislation that Congress is now considering called the Clean Water Restoration Act.

New wetlands along the Mississippi

NewScientist had a news item about a proposal to "grow" the currently diminished Mississippi River Delta in Louisiana. This would keep sediment and eroded soil from washing out into the deepest parts of the Gulf, create new habitat and land, and create a new buffer for New Orleans against storms.

"You keep the sediment within the coastal boundary current that keeps it running along the shoreline, whereas now it gets ejected into the Gulf," adds Robert Twilley, of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, who worked with Parker on the project.

(h/t PlaNetizen)

Damaged landscapes

An interesting piece appeared over the weekend. In a paper in AAAS, a team of researchers has provided more detail on how damaged landscapes can still perform basic natural functions. The paper, "Coastal ecosystem-based management with non-linear ecological functions and values", looked at how some coastal ecosystems could support a limited amount of human use (or impact) and still perform much of their natural role.

As the world's population continues to crowd coastal zones, it is important that multidisciplinary approaches emerge for describing the impacts of the human footprint:

“Too often, poor ecological data lead to inaccurate valuation of these benefits, resulting frequently in an ‘all or none’ choice of either preserving or converting all coastal habitats to human use,” Barbier says. “This ‘all or none’ outcome is at odds with EBM strategies, which are trying to find acceptable compromises between conservation and development.”

It will be interesting to see if this becomes a more broadly understood idea, or just gets used as an excuse for developing sensitive landscape.

The Most Famous Tulloch

Well, it looks like the title of "Most Famous Tulloch" has changed hands.

It used to be Lieutenant Colonel Tulloch, of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers Baltimore District. The (in)famous wetlands Tulloch Rule was named after him and specified how excavations would be treated as opposed to just the dredging and filling under the Corps' 404 duties. Since it was first created in the early 1990s, there has been a Federal court ruling overturning it (in the late 1990s) and now there is a new Tulloch II rule established by EPA and COE. And I trust that wetlands advocates and home builders will help keep the Tulloch name alive in the courts for years to come.

But now, ruining everything for Lt. Col. Tulloch, comes along an actress named Bitsie. after some other minor roles, Bitsie Tulloch is starring in quarterlife which is an online tv show which has been picked up by NBC for wider broadcast. NY Magazine's headline captures it well, "Quarterlife's Bitsie Tulloch on Her Role as the World's First Attractive Blogger."