LB 28-287 - Reconciling ecological tradeoffs in wetland restoration

Thursday, August 18, 2022

5:00 PM – 6:30 PM EDT

Located in: ESA Exhibit Hall

Presenting Author(s)

EU

Emily Ury

Postdoctoral fellow
University of Waterloo
Durham, NC, Canada

Coauthor(s)

EB

Emily Bernhardt

Duke University, United States
NB

Nandita Basu

University of Waterloo, Canada

Background/Question/Methods:

The UN decade of ecological restoration has brought new energy and attention to repairing the planet. Yet restoration efforts can fail in many ways. Wetlands provide a useful lens for interrogating restoration outcomes due to their lengthy history of protection, restoration, and creation. We investigated the history of wetland protection in the US and primary literature on wetland restoration outcomes to address the following questions: (1) how well does wetland restoration deliver on critical ecosystem functions and ecosystem services? (2) What are the ecological and socio-ecological tradeoffs associated with wetland restoration and can they be mitigated? And ultimately, (3) how can we improve wetland restoration going forward for maximum socio-ecological return on restoration spending?

Results/Conclusions:

Throughout the 20th century, more than 100 million acres of US wetlands were drained and lost to farmland and development. Wetland restoration and creation projects have collectively recovered less than 1% of this loss. Additionally, these mitigated wetlands often do not replace the functions of lost wetlands due to their landscape position, legacies of past land use, size, and other differences. In a case study from North Carolina, we show that neither the criteria for restoration nor the monitoring plan align with the desired outcomes. An economy for ecosystem services has led to the creation of systems with enhanced performance based on a single criteria, such as nitrogen removal, without considering the consequences of ecological trade-offs such as methane production. These tradeoffs vary as a function of spatial drivers – for example, wetlands in agricultural landscapes might provide nutrient removal service at the expense of biodiversity, while headwater wetlands may do the opposite. Data on the spatial and temporal dynamics of these tradeoffs is limited and poses a challenge for optimizing future restoration. Moving forward, research and policy agendas for wetland restoration should promote synergies between multiple ecosystem services while also accounting for environmental tradeoffs and mitigating these wherever possible.