Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
restore rare threatened and endangered plant species, although most certainly these
benefits will be a by-product of such projects.
Wetland restoration projects are task oriented. Because of the task and timeline
focus, often plants, seeds, and money are the practical constraints that affect tim-
ing and project success. In contrast, living landscape programs are process oriented
necessarily owing to the scale, the lack of funds to support detailed work, and the
availability of key elements for detailed western-style restorations. For example, in
Iraq there is no network of wetland seed and plant materials suppliers, but instead
a poorly equipped agricultural infrastructure with few suppliers suited to support
restoration of marshes of any type. User groups will be expected to provide labor
as an important cultural investment. Often, it is the traditional extractive behaviors
of inhabitants that determine the success of similar programs. The Mesopotamian
marsh program must focus on changing those key factors that will initiate a chain
of events and outcomes to benefit the users who will respond by traditional man-
agement and husbandry. This implies that the success of the program will depend
more on understanding the culture of the marsh Arab peoples who live there than
any elegant technical choices made by informed ecologists or landscape planners.
Persons working in Iraq would be well advised to study the user peoples and their
cultures before plunging into the intellectually satisfying tasks of elegant technical
ecological restoration.
All wetland restoration projects and programs restore hydrology to varying
degrees depending on the water supply, surcharge issues, substrate condition, and
soil chemistry changes. Areas chosen for western conservation projects and biodi-
versity outcomes often restore isolated wetlands and relink fragmented habitat areas.
Depending on budgets, individual projects may focus only on habitat restoration
(e.g., restore the hydrology and hope the seed bank, invasion, and succession provide
the biota), or may import seeds, plants, and even selected wildlife. Living-working
landscape programs are designed from traditional human uses, reconnecting cul-
tures to the land. In North America the closest parallels to the Iraq situation may
be the nascent projects to restore traditional bison ranges based on native prairies
on certain Native American and federal lands (see chapter 9). However, there are
very few cross-cultural projects to be examined that could serve as models for the
landscape-oriented Iraq Mesopotamian marsh restoration program.
In arid areas, water availability will constrain project outcomes (see chapters 7
and 8). Water rights and diversion for wetland restorations can present a signifi-
cant impediment to success. Living-working landscape programs typically pit sub-
sistence water-use against private, industrial, and urban users, unless a policy or
political mandate predetermines that public-good benefits outweigh those of the
individual property owners or governments. As we contemplate this immense task
for Iraq, questions about Iraqi water law; the influence of other nations, particularly
Turkey, on the water supplied to the upper reaches of the Tigris-Euphrates River
systems; and the effects of other Iraqi users on supply and water quality emerge as
significant technical unknowns. Restoration here must be considered in a political
context (see chapter 1).
Programs to restore disturbed wetlands in arid regions often encounter highly
modified substrates that were damaged fundamentally by changes that followed
Search WWH ::
Custom Search