Wetland Functions and Values

1
Wetland Functions and Values

• Brian C. Reeder, Ph.D.
• Professor of Biology
• Morehead State University
• Institute for Regional Analysis and Public Policy

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What are functions and values?

• Function-assigned duty or activity something
  closely related to another thing and dependent
  upon it for its existence, value, or significance
• Value-suitable equivalent of something else
  utility or merit worthwhile
• Source American Heritage Dictionary

3
Wetland have functions and values at a number of
levels

• Global biogeochemical cycles (hardest to
  quantify, most important for life)
• Soils and productivity
• Food and shelter for animals
• Plant establishment and nourishment
• Human values
• Flood control
• Fish and Wildlife

4
Management and policy decisions of wetland
functions and values tend to be made
anthropocentrically

• These values may be the result of ecosystem
  functions and processes
• The value may be very different for diverse
  stakeholders
• Regional (global tends to be ignored in the U.S.,
  but not in Europe)
• Specific function based (e.g. birdwatching,
  hunting, flood control, endangered species, art,
  history)

5
Value is viewpoint dependent

• Swamps and marshes were generally considered
• Farmlands yet undrained
• Places that caused disease
• Dangerous and foreboding
• Hindrances to navigation
• Convenient locations for development
• valueless

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These perceptions changed in recent history

• Water volume control
• source for drought times storage for floods
• storm abatement (Gulf Coast)
• Most the worlds food
• rice
• extraordinary primary productivity
• nutrients and water
• nursery
• no wetlands no seafood

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Global Ecosystem Processes Source, Sink,
Transformer

• Carbon Storage
• hydric soils
• nutrient rich
• slow decomposition
• plants and animals
• export to adjacent ecosystems
• fossil fuels (Carboniferous Era swamps
• heavy metal retention
• Nitrogen cycling
• nitrate reduction (air)
• Storage
• Phosphorus cycling
• Sulfur cycling

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Wetlands have been called the kidneys of the
landscape because they can retain and transform
nutrients and waste

• Agricultural runoff
• Removal of sulfates by reducing them to sulfides
  and binding
• Human waste
• Eutrophication

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Aesthetic Values

• Art is an expression of nature.
• Duck stamps
• landscapes
• Beauty of plants and animals (nonconsuptive)
• Birdwatching
• Canoe trips
• Pioneering instinct
• Solitude and wild

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Historical Values

• Floodplains bury and preserve artifacts
• Slow decomposition, and tannins, keep artifacts
  fresh
• Deposition of pollen and fossils allow ecologists
  to use them as time machines

11
Educational Values

• High productivity and high diversity
• Easy to construct in outdoor classrooms
• Used at all grade and age levels
• First microscope lab
• Playing in the mud

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Human Subsistence Use

• Marsh Arabs of Iraq
• Native American Rice Production
• Cultivated rice
• Native Alaskans and Canadians of the tundra and
  muskeg

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Values due to Ecosystem Function

• Flood Control
• Water Storage
• Storm Abatement
• Water quality improvement

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Flood Control

• Plant transpiration reduces base flow
• Floodplains retain water
• Stems do not necessarily cause water to back up
• In Chesapeake Bay drainage, a 4 loss of wetland
  area doubled flood flow

15
Water Storage

• Bottomland forest in the Mississippi basin before
  European settlement retained about 60 days of
  river discharge. Today, what is left retains less
  than 12 days of discharge.
• USACOE determined that the Charles River (MA)
  floodplains were so effective that it was cheaper
  to purchase wetlands than to build control
  structures. The 3,400 ha of wetlands were worth
  17 million per year in flood damage reduction
• Can keep up base flow during droughts, and
  recharge shallow aquifers

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Storm Abatement

• New Orleans
• Barrier islands are designed to take the storms
  energy
• Loss of wetlands and water storage
• Public Cost?
• Buildings on floodplains may become artificial
  reefs for fish

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Water Quality Improvement

• Kentuckys 1 pollutant-sediment, is settled
• Chealation of heavy metals
• Transformation of nutrients
• Permanent burial
• High diversity of decomposers and decomposition
  processes

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Population and Community Values

• Vegetation
• Timber
• Fur
• Fish
• Shellfish
• Birds
• Threatened and Endangered Species

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Herbaceous Vegetation

• Ryther and others argued that a 1,000 ha water
  hyacinth farm could produce 10,000,000,000,000
  BTU of methane per year and at the same time
  remove all the nitrogen from the wastewater of
  700,000 people
• Peat production
• Peat for Energy
• Fiber and building material

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Timber

• Cypress knees make neat lamps
• About 13 million ha of bottomland swamp in the US
  have been estimated to have about 8 billion in
  timber resources
• The Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia is being
  salvage harvested of rare Atlantic white cedar.

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Fur and Skin

• Harvest over 10 million muskrat pelts per year in
  the US
• Nutria escaped from captivity in Louisiana and
  are harvested for fur and to reduce their damage
• Beaver
• Minks
• Alligators where abundant

22
Fish and Shellfish

• Over 95 of the fish and shellfish harvested in
  the US are wetland dependent
• over 2 billion per year industry
• Direct relationship between fish yield and
  adjacent wetland area
• Dependent for part of life cycle, or entire life
  cycle

23
Fishing

• Anglers spent 38.4 billion in 1996 to pursue
  their sport.
• 15.4 billion for fishing trips
• 19.2 billion for equipment
• 3.8 billion for licenses, stamps tags, land
  leasing and ownership, membership dues and
  contributions, and magazines.
• Total economic output generated by freshwater
  fishing in 1996 exceeded 76.9 billion, including
  the impact on retailers, suppliers of goods and
  services to retailers, wholesalers and
  manufacturers, plus the indirect and induced
  impacts resulting from these activities.
• Freshwater fishing is the No. 1 participation
  sport in Kentucky, Louisiana and South Carolina.
• 48.8 million Americans 7 and older fish.

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Birds

• Waterfowl Hunting
• DU and Duck Stamps
• Waterfowl hunters spend more than most other
  hunters
• US Fish and Wildlife estimated that in 2001,
  waterfowl hunters spent 495 million on trip
  expenditures and 440 million on equipment.
• Kentucky has over 25,000 waterfowl hunters

25
Birds

• Birdwatching
• According to USFW, in 2001 about 22 of Americans
  fed, watched, or photographed birds
• Kentucky ranks 8th in the nation--35 of
  Kentuckians consider themselves birders
• 69 of birders travel to streamsides, and 47 to
  other wetlands
• It is estimated that U.S. birders spent 32
  billion dollars and contributed 85 billion in
  economic benefits, including the creation of
  863,406 jobs.

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Threatened and Endangered Species

• There are some links between biodiversity and
  ecosystem function
• Wetlands are one of the most important ecosystems
  to most threatened and endangered species during
  some point in their life cycle, including
• 68 of birds
• 63 of reptiles
• 75 of amphibians
• 66 of mussels

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Wetland provide Vital Functions and Values to
Humans, but

• Can you quantify it?
• sort of
• Do all wetland provide all values?
• No, or certainly not equally
• Can we restore or create systems that provide
  those functions and values?
• Yes and No, sort of, it depends

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Who Gets What Value

• For example, off-site v. on-site mitigation here
  in Louisville.
• flood control v. waterfowl production
• Fish at Krogers v. hatchery v. riparian wetland

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Estimating Values and Functions

• We like to see dollars and or jobs
• Approaches vary orders of magnitude
• Replacement cost
• Willingness to pay
• Scaling and weighing
• Etc.
• Calculating Mitigation

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If all wetlands are not equal, cant we value
them differently?

• Spatial and temporal issues
• Value is stakeholder dependent
• Intangibles are hard to quantify
• Wetland construction and creation success is hard
  to quantify
• Sustainability and landscape position