Yutaro Sasaki
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The Guardian
NAUFRAGE, P.E.I – A recent Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada study suggests wetlands contain natural filtering capacities.
In an interview with The Guardian on Dec. 13, AAFC scientist Audrey Murray explained the potential benefits of an edge-of-field wetland.
“Wetlands have a whole bunch of natural filtering capacities. They have a lot of ecosystem functions, and they’re really valuable ecosystem components,” she said.
However, Murray noted the function of the mini wetland depends on the weather conditions.
“Sometimes they’ll be more dry, sometimes they’ll be more wet. They have areas in them that have normal to high oxygen levels or areas that don’t have oxygen in them. That produces a whole bunch of diversity, which is really, really good at treating water,” she said.
IMPORTANCE
Murray believes wetlands are important to P.E.I. as they treat the Island’s water.
“Wetlands are important because we get heavy rainfall events, and we also have sandy soils, so there’s a lot of sediment that washes away,” she said.
With agriculture a major industry in P.E.I., Murray further explained the importance of wetlands.
“Because we’re such an agriculturally intensive province, we have a lot of nutrients in the water. Wetlands add an extra layer of protection that helps treat those agricultural contaminants and protect the waterways,” she said.
WATER PROTECTION
Murray said wetlands keep the runoff from fields directly entering the waterways.
In P.E.I., wetlands make up about five per cent of the land area.
“A lot of wetlands globally have been drained and turned into farmland,” Murray said.
As the presence of wetlands progressively decreases worldwide, Murray explained the stress it poses on the environment.
“Wetlands were initially providing the ecosystem with water purification, and now, all of a sudden, we’re putting additional stresses on the ecosystem by adding all these agricultural chemicals,” she said.
FILTERS
In the past, Murray called wetlands the kidneys of the ecosystem.
“In our bodies, the kidneys filter. The wetland filters within the ecosystem,” she said.
As Murray and the AAFC continue to collect more data, the effectiveness of her research is still unknown.
Looking forward, Murray wants to discover the best approach to her research method and how it could influence farming practices in P.E.I.
“What’s the best plant to plant here? What’s the best size for the wetland? All kinds of things could be adopted,” she said.
ENDANGERED SPECIES
In a phone interview with The Guardian on Dec. 19, Ryan Guild, a UPEI Climate Change and Adaptation student, explained how wetlands can impact the ecosystem in P.E.I.
The importance of wetlands extends beyond their ability to filter water.
Through his research, Guild explained how wetlands are crucial for piping plovers, which are considered an endangered species in Canada.
“Piping plovers partly depend on the tidal ponds on sandy beaches, which is a wetland type on the Island,” Guild said.
The issue with climate change and salt marshes mainly surrounds rapid sea level rise, he added.
Aside from tidal ponds, Guild says other wetland types in P.E.I. are essential to water filtering.
“Bogs and swamps and salt marshes provide essential benefits to the region because they filter water to improve its quality. They mitigate floods by dampening storms and wave energies and also store large amounts of carbon,” he said.
WHAT IS A WETLAND
Wetlands are areas of land that are saturated with water and feature plants that are adapted to those saturated soil conditions.
They can include fresh and salt-water marshes, wooded swamps, bogs and seasonally flooded forests.
Wetlands cover about 13 per cent of the land area of Canada.
In P.E.I., about five per cent of the province’s land base is classified as wetland.
Of those, about 20 per cent are salt or tidal marshes and the rest are freshwater marshes.
Yutaro Sasaki is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter, a position funded by the federal government. He can be reached by email at ysasaki@postmedia.com and followed on Twitter @PEyutarosasaki.