NAWM Members' Webinar Series

The National Association of Wetland Managers (NAWM) holds eight webinars per year for members. NAWM Member webinars cover a variety of topics encompassing wetland science, policy, program implementation, and legal issues. These webinars, including recordings for past webinars are available to NAWM members.  

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For more information about this webinar series, please contact Laura Burchill at laura@nawm.org or
(207) 892-3399. Learn more about sponsorship opportunities.

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View Past NAWM Members' Webinar Series Here 

View a List of Past NAWM Members' Webinar Series Recordings Here 

Geographically isolated wetlands on the Southeastern Coastal Plain: Managing landscapes to maintain and enhance ecosystem services 

ABSTRACT

Geographically Isolated Wetlands, or GIWs, are often defined as wetlands that lack a consistent surface water connection to other water bodies. Despite the apparent lack of connectivity, GIWs provide ecosystem services that greatly exceed their spatial extent, and are important functional components of the broader landscape. At local scales, GIWs provide critical habitat for wildlife, including threatened and endangered species. At regional scales, GIWs improve water quality by removing sediments and nutrients. GIWs also store large amounts of water, helping buffer watersheds from both floods and droughts. Lastly, they are hotspots for carbon storage and may contribute to climate change mitigation. Here, we provide an overview of GIWs on the Dougherty Plain, a karst region of southwestern Georgia with >11,000 individual wetlands, and discuss GIWs through the lens of ecosystem services and nature-based solutions. We review long-term hydrologic monitoring of diverse wetlands with a focus on the role of hydrology as a master variable in driving provision of ecosystem services. We also highlight long-term trends in hydroperiod and review ongoing projects that leverage these long-term data. Finally, we discuss how GIWs respond to land management practices that affect hydrology. Our results emphasize the need for more effective protection of wetlands and suggest the need for creative conservation solutions at local, state, and federal levels.

BIOS

Steven Brantley, The Jones Center at Ichauway
Steven received his B.S. and M.S. in Biology and his Ph.D. (2009) in Integrative Life Sciences, all from Virginia Commonwealth University. His research at VCU focused on the consequences of shrub expansion on the Virginia barrier islands and was supported by the Virginia Coast Reserve LTER program. He subsequently worked as a post-doc at the U.S. Forest Service Coweeta Hydrologic Lab where he studied the effects of forest species composition on forest water use, the hydrologic effects of the hemlock woolly adelgid infestation, and strategies to conserve surviving hemlock trees. Steven has been at Ichauway since 2014 where he has engaged in diverse interdisciplinary work related to interactions between land and water. When he’s not doing science, Steven enjoys spending time with family, cooking, and watching football at all levels.   

Katy Perkins, The Jones Center at Ichauway
Katy received her B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering with a minor in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Co-advised by Dr. Frances O’Donnell, Katy’s thesis focuses on the links between the hydrological function of geographically isolated wetlands and surrounding landscape variables. Specifically, her work addresses how longleaf pine cover and restoration affect wetland hydrology using a watershed modeling framework. Katy’s academic interests include restoration ecology, biogeochemistry, and remote sensing. When she is not wading in a wetland, Katy can be found hiking, reading, and listening to podcasts.

Registration will be open soon. Please check back.   

A Certificate of Attendance to be used toward Continuing Education Credits is available when participating in NAWM's live webinars. All Certificates must be claimed no later than 60 days from the live presentation. Certificates are not available for viewing recorded webinars. More Information.

Strategies and Tools for Peatland Restoration

ABSTRACTS

Erik Lilleskov
PeatRestore: providing the knowledge and tools needed to make informed decisions about peatland restoration in the United States.

The PeatRestore collaboration seeks to provide the knowledge and resources needed to manage peatland ecosystems sustainably. This includes developing map resources, restoration guides, and decision support/planning tools for managers and policy-makers. Peatland conservation and restoration are globally important goals because of peatlands’ potential to sequester and store carbon for millennia, provide habitat for plants and wildlife, regulate hydrology, and emit greenhouse gases (GHGs) when degraded. To provide information that can be used to identify possible targets for restoration, we have developed a peatland condition map for the conterminous US and Hawaii using existing GIS-based information. Of the 94,750 km2 of histosols and 13,533 km2 of histic epipedons (HE) analyzed, 7 % (7709 km2) were under agricultural use. Of 100,415 km2 of histosols and HE not in agricultural use, 19 % were within 150 m of ditches, roads, or railroads. Of mapped histosols, 38 % (36,042 km2) were legally protected from extractive use, and 635 km2 were in NRCS wetland easements. Based on IPCC tier 1 emission factors, the greatest reduction of CO2-e emissions per unit area and nationally would be from rewetting of peatlands under agriculture. In non-agricultural areas, rewetting peatlands affected by ditching alone is likely more cost-effective than if they are also affected by roads and railroads.   

Dominic Uhelski
Strategies and Challenges for Restoring Post-agricultural Peatlands

In post-glaciated landscapes along the temperate-boreal climatic tension zone, peatland and agricultural extents overlap and large areas of former peatland have been drained and converted to agriculture. The landscape homogenization caused by mass agricultural conversion depauperates biodiversity, habitat availability, and landscape resilience. In addition, peat soils under agriculture are large sources of greenhouse gas emissions, making them a priority for restoration actions to slow or reverse those emissions. These facts have seen some recognition and made agricultural peatland restoration a notable feature of green policy moves in Europe and North America. However, restoration of peat soils in post-agricultural settings is made more difficult because of the legacy effects of extensive alteration and need to accommodate ongoing agricultural activities in the surrounding areas. Due to these conditions, many early attempts at restoration have had limited success. How do existing methods of peat restoration work in post-agricultural sites, and what can be done to improve restoration outcomes in these challenging situations? This talk will review the challenges facing peatland restoration in post-agricultural areas, case studies of successful and failed peatland restorations, and describe existing and emerging methods to improve restoration success.

BIOS

Erik Lilleskov is a research ecologist and project leader with the USDA Forest Service, Research and Development, based in Houghton, MI. His work spans the gamut from understanding how global change affects the fungal and microbial communities that regulate soil processes, to developing actionable science to facilitate informed ecosystem management. Over the past 15 years much of his work has been on developing the scientific knowledge, capacity, and science delivery products relevant to peatland ecosystem degradation and restoration. This work has been focused at local, regional and global scales, and includes mapping, microbial community studies, ecosystem carbon cycling studies, and management practices, including restoration. He believes strongly that collaboration and building communities of practice will enhance our ability to maintain healthy ecosystems and local economies, and seeks opportunities for scientists, managers, and policy makers to work together to achieve these goals. 

Dominic Uhelski is an applied wetland ecologist who uses biogeochemistry to understand how ecosystem properties - and restoration design - drive carbon and nutrient cycles, which in turn shape successional trajectories and restoration outcomes. His favorite scientific topics include restoration design, greenhouse gas flux, water quality impacts, and disturbance ecology, particularly fire. In his free time Dominic enjoys getting outdoors for hiking, biking, and climbing, or cozying up indoors to cook, brew, blast virtual aliens, or enjoy quality television.

 Alex Moya (Pew) works to incorporate conservation and restoration of coastal blue carbon and peatland habitats in state and national climate policies for Pew’s U.S. conservation project. She leads efforts to engage primarily with state agencies as they seek to incorporate wetlands into their climate change planning, helping to connect science and research to the policy choices of decision-makers. Before joining Pew, Moya worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on nonpoint source pollution and Columbia River salmon issues in the Pacific Northwest.

Registration will be open soon. Please check back.   

A Certificate of Attendance to be used toward Continuing Education Credits is available when participating in NAWM's live webinars. All Certificates must be claimed no later than 60 days from the live presentation. Certificates are not available for viewing recorded webinars. More Information.

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