S2E3. Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information about how weather, plants, animals, and humans cause changes to the environment.
While my project focuses on the effect of blue-green algae on the environment in relation to fiddler crabs, I wanted to also include human impacts on the ecosystem. Humans impact a multitude of different factors in an environment through multiple disturbances. These include direct impacts such as filling, grading, removal of vegetation, building construction, changes in water levels, and drainage patterns. These effects are often the result of state and federal wetland regulatory programs. Indirect actions can also detrimentally impact wetlands and stem from many different sources. These would include any influx of surface water and sediment, fragmentation of a wetland from a contiguous wetland complex, loss of recharge area, or changes in local drainage patterns. These actions are often not able to be contained by state and federal regulations and programs yet
local implementation of watershed management would be effective. Humans have caused significant changes to the function and physical aspects of wetlands, most commonly through the implementation of new development. This leads to soil erosion in higher wetland areas and the accumulation of sediment in low wetland areas. Sediment is a very high nutrient substance so the chemical composition of an area can be severely impacted by the fluctuation of sediment within it. New developments do not only pertain to commercial
housing and businesses and extend to encompass dam construction which leads to stream channelization and and discharge of industrial/urban/agricultural wastes/sewage. These forms of runoff have regional effects as well as local as they add materials to groundwater and surface water which carry throughout an ecosystem. Dams can be beneficial as controlled flooding during drier season can help to keep a level of normality within an environment to keep a stable animal population. These controlled flows must be kept consistent however, as a lack of flow can impact fish migration periods, can lead to a lack of access to different waterways, habitat availability, eggs and fish being stranded in areas with little water, the floodplains being inaccessible during drier seasons, etc.
Hunting, fishing, trapping, poaching, or any harvest if not done in moderation can impact the food chain/web and the biodiversity of an area, specifically wetlands. Timber harvest and livestock grazing pose the biggest threat to wetlands as they can impact the water quality and habitats. However, these threats pose a reversible or a temporary impact unlike drainage and filling for residential development which cause irreversible damage to wetlands.
Vocabulary
Ecosystem- A community of interacting organisms and their environment
Detrimental- Tending to cause harm
Regulatory- Intending to regulate/control something
Fragmentation- The process/state of breaking down into small or separate parts
Contiguous- Sharing a common/touching border
For additional information please watch the videos below:
Thank you for reading my week 7 upload and I hope to meet you all soon!
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