Improving the Success of Wetland Creation and Restoration with Know‐How, Time, and Self‐Design

The creation and restoration of new wetlands for mitigation of lost wetland habitat is a newly developing science/technology that is still seeking to define and achieve success of these wetlands. Fundamental requirements for achieving success of wetland creation and restoration projects are: understanding wetland function; giving the system time; and allowing for the self-designing capacity of nature. Mitigation projects involving freshwater marshes should require enough time, closer to 15-20 yr than 5 yr, to judge the success or lack thereof. Restoration and creation of forested wetlands, coastal wetlands, or peatlands may require even more time. Ecosystem-level research and ecosystem modelling development may provide guidance on when created and restored wetlands can be expected to comply with criteria that measure their success. Full-scale experimentation is now be- ginning to increase our understanding of wetland function at the larger spatial scales and longer time scales than those of most ecological experiments. Predictive ecological mod- elling may enable ecologists to estimate how long it will take the mitigation wetland to achieve steady state.

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