Ecological data from land surveys from 1811 for the 100,000-acre Connecticut Tract in western New York were transcribed and then analyzed using ArcGIS and IDRISI GIS software. The surveys contained both witness tree data and line descriptions, which were analyzed for species composition and community type. Results illustrate that many changes have occurred in species composition. Possible cause...

Wetlands provide ecosystem goods and services vitally important to humans. Land managers and policymakers working to conserve wetlands require regularly updated information on the statuses of wetlands across the landscape. However, wetlands are challenging to map remotely with high accuracy and consistency. We investigated the use of multitemporal polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) dat...

Constructed wetlands have become a good alternative to urban and industrial wastewater treatments. Because of the many interactions between the different parts that form the wetland, the design of these systems used to be very complex so a good design tool is required. Hybrid constructed wetlands mix the aerobic and anaerobic properties of vertical and horizontal subsurface flow constructed wet...

We conducted an intercontinental biogeographic survey to analyze the effects of invasive plant species in its native and invaded ranges. Our study system included tidal wetlands colonized by Iris pseudacorus L. (yellow flag iris, Iridaceae) along salinity gradients two estuaries European (Guadalquivir Estuary) North American (San Francisco Bay-Delta hypothesized I. would impart more negative co...

Inland waters (lakes, rivers and reservoirs) are now understood to contribute large amounts of methane (CH4) to the atmosphere. However, fluxes are poorly constrained and there is a need for improved knowledge on spatiotemporal variability and on ways of optimizing sampling efforts to yield representative emission estimates for different types of aquatic ecosystems. Low-latitude floodplain lake...

O n 20 April 2010, the BP-owned, Transoceanoperated Deepwater Horizon oil-drilling rig exploded, killing 11 workers and injuring 17, and sending massive quantities of crude oil riddled with lethal toxins from the sea floor into the Gulf of Mexico. Geophysicists, Earth-space scientists, and policymakers continue to debate the cause of the explosion, how much oil has been released, how best to co...

The evasion of carbon dioxide from inland waters was only recently included in assessments of the global carbon budget1,2. Current estimates of carbon dioxide release from global freshwater systems, including lakes and wetlands, range from 0.7 to 3.3 Pg C per year1,3-6. However, these estimates are based on incomplete spatial coverage of carbon dioxide evasion, and an inadequate understanding o...

Riparian wetlands have been shown to be effective "sinks" for nitrate N (NO3-), minimizing the downstream export of N to streams and coastal water bodies. However, the vast majority of riparian denitrification research has been in agricultural and forested watersheds, with relatively little work on riparian wetland function in urban watersheds. We investigated the variation and magnitude of den...

Amphibians commonly use wetlands for breeding habitat, and given the concern about their ongoing global declines, the effects of urbanization on the breeding distribution of amphibians need to be quantified. Thus, we conducted a survey of the larval amphibian community in central Pennsylvania (U.S.A.) wetlands along an urbanization gradient. Wetlands in urban areas had less surrounding forest a...

Wetlands are critical habitats for birds. However, wetlands are being degraded at an accelerating rate due to global human activity, and a disproportionate fraction of wetland-dependent bird species are in decline. We evaluated the conservation value of a new Ramsar site, Guangdong Haifeng Wetlands, China, for birds, by comparing bird communities (using line transect data) in 3 different distri...