Inland wetlands

Prairie potholes are characterized as depressional wetlands often found in the upper Midwest including North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Hydrology is controlled by snowmelt and rain during spring, which fills low-lying areas forming concentric circles. 

Playas are ronnd depressional areas on the landscape fed by fresh water from rainfall. These wetlands occnr in sonthem high plains, including areas in West Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas. Some of these wetlands accumulate salts as water from underlying aquifers supplying salt percolates upward through the soil profile. These wetlands are formed seasonally and may stay flooded during the wet season and dry out during the remainder of the year. 

Vernal pools are small depressional wetlands that range in size from small pockets saturated with water to shallow lakes. These wetlands are found in gently sloping grassland landscapes with Mediterranean climate, such as in the West Coast. Many of these wetlands in California have been drained for development. During any given single season, these wetlands may fill and dry several times. The subsurface is either bedrock or a clay layer that helps to hold the water. 

The basic biogeochemical processes involved in removing contaminants from wastewaters are the same as those encountered in natural systems. These may include filtration, sedimentation, and microbial degradation. For example, total suspended solids are removed by filtration and sedimentation, biological oxygen demand (BOD) by microbial degradation, nitrogen by nitrification-denitrification, and phosphorus by adsorption and precipitation reactions. These processes are discussed in detail in various chapters of this book. 

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KzX is usually expressed per meter and depends on wavelength and water composition. Typically, ultraviolet radiation penetrates less deeply than visible radiation. Attenuation coefficients vary over many orders of magnitude in natural waters, with the highest values (least light penetration) in inland water bodies and the lowest values (highest penetration) in open seawater. The photic zone for solar ultraviolet radiation, which is very important for halocarbon photoreactions, ranges from tens of meters in the open ocean and clear lakes to only a few centimeters in some inland wetlands. The spectral properties of water bodies are linked to water composition. Baker and Smith (20) developed algorithms that relate K,k to certain parameters such as chlorophyll a concentrations. 

List and describe the various types of (1) inland wetlands and (2) coastal wetlands. 

Clair, T. A., B. G. Warner, R. Roberts, H. Murkin, J. Lilley, L. Mortsch, and C. Rubec. 1995. Canadian inland wetlands and climate change. In Canadian Country Study Climate Impacts and Adaptations. Environmental Canada, Ottawa, pp. 189-218. 

Surface waters are diverse in nature. They might be near shore or Inland wetland environments or mld-oceanlc ollgotrophlc water. Until recently, sunlight Induced photochemistry was not recognized as an Important pathway for the transformation of natural and anthropogenic chemicals In surface waters. It Is now well established that photochemlcally mediated processes are Important In most, If not all, areas of aqueous phase environmental chemistry. Both direct, primary, and Indirect photoprocesses have been documented In natural waters. 

The landlocked Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water on Earth. Surrounded by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan, the Caspian Sea is home to myriad ecosystems. At the meeting point of the Middle East, Europe, and Asia, the Caspian region includes steppe land in the north, cold, continental deserts and semi-deserts in the northeast and east, and warmer mountain and highland systems in the south and southwest. The coastal wetlands of the Caspian basin include many shallow, saline pools, which attract a variety of bird life and biodiversity over 400 species are unique to the Caspian. In addition, the sea s native sturgeon is famous the world around for the roe it produces sturgeon from the Caspian Sea accounts for approximately 90% of the world s caviar industry. 

Most of the landforms in which wetlands form can be seen in tracing a river from its source in hilly or mountainous areas to its outflow in coastal floodplains and the sea. The main landforms are inland valleys, allnvial fans or fan complexes, meander or lacustrine floodplains, and allnvial terraces (Figure 1.4), and each of these is associated with particnlar soils as illnstrated for ricelands in Asia in Table 1.6. This section gives a brief description of these associations. More complete descriptions are given in Moormann and van Breemen (1978), Driessen and Moormann (1985) and Richardson and Vepraskas (2001). Following these anthors I use the USDA (1999) soil classification. 

Three areas of uncertainty in this present inventory of natural sulfur emissions which need further work include natural variability in complicated wetland regions, differences in emission rates in the corrected SURE data and those reported by Lamb et al. (1) and Goldan et al. (21) for inland soil sites, and biomass emissions for which only a very limited data base easts. The current difficulty in determining the sources of variability emphasizes the need to better understand natural sulfur release mechanisms. At present, it may be useful to consider the emission rates based on the corrected SURE data as an upper bound to natural emissions and use the emission rates based on data described by Lamb et al. (1) as a more conservative estimate of natural sulfur emissions. However, this still leaves a factor of 22 difference between the suggested upper bound and our best current estimate. 

Some inland marshes and small inner wetlands are also salty and have poor drainage. As a result, they accumulate salts in drought periods, which may... 

Snell E. A. (1987) Wetland distribution and conversion in southern Ontario. Working Paper No. 48. Inland Waters/Lands Directorate, Environment Canada. 

Detritus includes non-living particulate, colloidal, and dissolved organic matter, and metabolically size only affects rates of hydrolytic attack [31]. Inland aquatic ecosystems collect organic matter, particularly in dissolved forms, from terrestrial, wetland, and littoral sources in quantities that supplement if not exceed those produced autochthonously. Rates of utilization of that organic matter are slowed by a combination of chemical recalcitrance as well as displacement to anoxic environments. As a result, inland aquatic ecosystems are hetero-trophic and functionally detrital bowls, not algal bowls. 

A projected two- to fivefold accelerafion of global average sea-level rise during fhe nexf 100 years (IPCC, 1996) would inundate low-lying coastal wetland habitats that cannot transgress inland or vertically accrete at a rate that equals or exceeds sea-level rise. 

Much of the wetland loss occurring in coastal Louisiana is due to the deterioration of highly organic marsh soil. As discussed earlier, conversion of coastal marshes to inland open water is associated with plant stresses such as saltwater intrusion into nonsaline marshes and increased soil waterlogging as a result of subsidence. Marsh elevation decreases rapidly following plant mortality because of the structural collapse of the living root networks (DeLaune et al., 1994). The peat collapse and the associated erosion result in the conversion of marsh into open water. Conversions to open water system releases a considerable amount of carbon into the estuary where it is either decomposed or... 

In addition to habitat concerns, some artificial wetlands have been created at some locations to function as tertiary treatment or final effluent polishing steps for small municipal sewage treatment facilities. The few known cases where this has been used are located inland from the Great Lakes. While several municipal pollution control plans have seriously examined this idea, it has yet to be implemented at any sizeable facility on the Great Lakes shoreline. 

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