Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
INTRODUCTION
Typical wetland restorations in developed western nations proceed from regulatory
actions and the goals of conservation groups. Most restored wetlands are small, a few
to several hundred acres, and not on a landscape scale. Some projects have aimed to
restore historic hydrological conditions, but few achieve high-quality biological out-
comes. Most projects contribute little to regional or global-scale biodiversity, water
management, or other valuable functional outcomes. Rarely do these western proj-
ects provide much for human subsistence.
Few western watershed-scale restorations aim to support people as the key ben-
eficiaries who will subsist on the biodiversity, productivity, and other attributes of
restored wetland systems. Design of wetland restorations to provide healthy food-
stuffs, water, flood damage reduction, fish, and wildlife for humans will require
a restoration strategy very different than those driven by western-style regulatory
actions or strict conservation goals.
ECOLOGICAL WETLAND PROJECTS VERSUS LIVING-
WORKING LANDSCAPE-SCALE PROGRAMS
Restorations designed as conservation projects differ from restored living and work-
ing landscapes. Living landscape projects to support humans usually involve agri-
cultural and animal husbandry. The planning and design process on small wetland
projects reduces variability by constraining hydrology to a narrow operational range.
Property boundaries define the limits of most smaller conservation projects to one
owner's lands. Off-site impacts including flooding, surcharging shallow groundwa-
ter, and impacts on agricultural crops impose serious limits to the scale and hydrau-
lic variability allowed in small wetland restorations. The typical project has few
stakeholders. Often a deal is brokered between a conservation group, an agency, and
the landowner, such as a farmer interested in waterfowl. For very large landscape-
level restorations aimed to provide free goods and services to groups of people who
will use the restored area for subsistence, the goals and impacts will be much larger
and comprehensive. Goals will be driven by human needs rather than conservation
concepts, although these are by no means opposed ideas. In fact, good landscape-
scale restorations done for subsistence of people must be sustainable through time.
Large-scale living-working landscape restorations will have different kinds of
variability than planners consider for a western-style wetland project. These restora-
tions require user involvement from goal setting to design on through stewardship.
For most western conservation projects, a strong biodiversity focus is typical (see
chapter 10). Productivity, diversity, and system dynamics are typical measured end-
points; services and goods provided to resource-dependent human users are often
considered to be the least important outcome. Reestablishing traditional relation-
ships between humans and the ecological system from which they once obtained
subsistence is not an important outcome in most western projects. However, in the
struggle to restore Iraq's Mesopotamian marshes, reestablishing the traditional way
of life, the marsh Arab culture and the goods produced by the ecological system for
humans, must be foremost in the minds of participants. These will not be projects to
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