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Modeling the impacts of wetland restoration in former cranberry farms on nitrogen removal
Citation:
Balogh, S., C. Wigand, R. Martin, A. Hackman, AND K. Ballantine. Modeling the impacts of wetland restoration in former cranberry farms on nitrogen removal. Society of Wetlands Scientists (SWS) Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, May 29 - June 01, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
Nitrogen removal and carbon sequestration are two services provided by freshwater wetlands that are of interest to state restoration officials. This model is the first step toward quantifying the performance of restored wetlands in cranberry farms so that ultimately they might be provide another option to decision makers to meet nutrient TMDLs.
Description:
In population-dense Massachusetts (USA) acquiring historical wetlands for ecological restoration efforts can be difficult and expensive. Retiring cranberry bogs create a rare opportunity to restore historical wetlands. Environmental managers face important decisions about how to restore cranberry bogs and which ecosystem services to prioritize for actions. While restoration projects often succeed in rapidly recovering some plant and animal communities, some ecosystem structure and functions, such as soil carbon content or denitrification can take decades to be fully realized. We built an explanatory model to formalize our assumptions about restoration and recovery of wetland ecosystems in former cranberry farms. We focused on the impacts of wetland restoration on the nitrogen and carbon cycles, because the reduction of non-point nutrient pollution on Cape Cod is a priority for state and local officials. When available, we included empirical data on nitrogen and carbon stocks and transformations collected across a chronosequence of restored and fallow former cranberry farms in the region. Otherwise we included production and transformation functions from the wetlands restoration literature. We report key nitrogen and carbon pathways linked with nutrient transformations and identify data gaps in our models.