Depressional wetlands affect watershed hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecological functions.

ABSTRACT: Depressional wetlands of the extensive U.S. and Canadian Prairie Pothole Region afford numerous ecosystem processes that maintain healthy watershed functioning. However, these wetlands have been lost at a prodigious rate over past decades due to drainage for development, climate effects, and other causes. Options for management entities to protect the existing wetlands, and their functions, may focus on conserving wetlands based on spatial location vis-à-vis a floodplain or on size limitations (e.g., permitting smaller wetlands to be destroyed but not larger wetlands). Yet the effects of such management practices and the concomitant loss of depressional wetlands on watershed-scale hydrological, biogeochemical, and ecological functions are largely unknown. Using a hydrological model, we ana

SUBMITTER: Evenson GR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7724629 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature