Wetlands

Since the early 1970s, the negative impacts of small aircraft activity on local wildlife and subsistence hunting have been an ongoing concern expressed by rural communities in Arctic Alaska. More specifically, these communities have expressed concern that aircraft activity from industry, commercial (sport) hunting, research, and tourism is disturbing caribou by altering their behavior...

There is a growing movement within natural resource management to view wildlife health as a cumulative outcome of many different factors, rather than simply the absence of disease. This inclusive understanding of health opens the door to management options that are more creative than traditional techniques aimed at preventing or mitigating pathogens. The public health field uses a...

Freshwater is a critical driver for island ecosystems. In Hawaiʻi, though rainfall intensity has increased, total rainfall has been on the decline for the last two decades and, as a result, streamflow has also been reduced. The changes in dynamic patterns of streamflow could result in impacts to river, estuarine, and coastal habitats. In turn, these changes also affect the nine native...

Residents living along the coast of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River have experienced two record-setting floods, one in 2017 and another in 2019. These floods caused tremendous property damage and disruptions to the regional economy. The water levels on Lake Ontario are influenced by the operations of the Moses Saunders Dam on the St. Lawrence River. These operations are...

Manoomin, or wild rice, is an essential, sacred species for Native people throughout the Upper Great Lakes region, who have relied on the plant for food and ceremony for hundreds of years. Manoomin is also important to non-Native people, who also harvest it and benefit from the wildlife sustained by it. Manoomin is an indicator of ecosystem health—if manoomin is healthy so is the...

Loss of saltmarsh habitat is one of the biggest threats to coastal sustainability in the Northeast. Salt marsh has been identified as an essential fish and wildlife habitat, and loss of saltmarsh corresponds with precipitous declines in marsh-dependent wildlife. For example, the global population of Saltmarsh Sparrow is predicted to collapse within the next 50 years after experiencing a...

Mangroves are forested tidal wetlands that occur in tropical, sub-tropical, and warm temperate coastal regions around the world. Mangroves occupy a significant area of coastlines globally and provide important ecosystem services to humans and wildlife. These services include aesthetic value, storm protection, food provisioning, recreation, critical wildlife habitat, and biological carbon

Aquatic invasive species threaten our lakes, streams, and wetlands. These species not only change the biology within the waterbody, but they can change the way we use those waterbodies and the resources they produce. Those changes may have large economic impacts, such as direct management costs and indirect costs to fisheries, tourism and commerce. These species can be small like zebra...

The Prairie Pothole Region is recognized as one of the most critical breeding habitats for waterfowl in North America and is used by an estimated 50–80 % of the continent’s breeding duck population. The ongoing acquisition program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuge System has conserved approximately 1.3 million hectares of critical breeding-waterfowl habitat...

The Prairie Pothole Region is recognized as one of the most productive areas for waterfowl in North America and supports an estimated 50–80 % of the continent’s duck population. This important habitat is threatened by climate change and continued land-use change. The goal of this research is to establish a framework for assessing future impacts of climate and land-use change on Prairie...

Healthy wetlands provide buffers against drought, flooding, pollution, and other threats to humans and nature. Climate change imperils wetland health, including impacting the connections among wetlands that facilitate movements and prevent extinctions of wetland-dependent wildlife. One wildlife group of considerable conservation concern and vulnerability to climate induced wetland...

Ecosystems such as coral reefs and mangroves provide an effective first line of defense against coastal hazards and represent a promising nature-based solution to adapt to sea-level rise. In many areas, coral reefs cause waves to break and lose energy, allowing for sediment to accumulate on the inshore portion of reef flats (i.e. the shallowest, flattest part of a reef) and mangroves to...