Enhancing ecosystem services on the landscape with created, constructed and restored wetlands

摘要

Wetlands are far more important in the biosphere than their 5-7% of the landscape suggests (Mitsch et al., 2009). Wetlands are extremely diverse not only for their physical characteristics and geographical distribution but also within particular landscape units such as floodplains, mires or marshes (Maltby, 2009). This variation supports biodiversity and provides goals and services of economic and social benefits (Tables 1 and 2). Economic valuation of ecosystem services is becoming more widely used to understand the multiple benefits provided by ecosystems (Guo et al., 2001; Chen et al., 2009). Ecosystem services represent the benefits that living organisms obtain directly or indirectly from the ecosystem (Costanza et al., 1997; Zedler and Kercher, 2005). Wetlands provide many important services to human society, but are at the same time ecologically sensitive and adaptive systems. This explains why in recent years much attention has been directed towards the formulation and operation of sustainable management strategies for wetlands (Turner et al., 2000).