2008 Joint Annual Meeting (5-9 Oct. 2008): Wetlands in Agricultural Landscapes--Using Ecosystem Services for Agricultural Sustainability.

Agroecosystems are components of complex landscape matrices that often include wetlands. The ecosystem services provided by wetlands can play a role in maintaining agricultural sustainability, but in many agricultural landscapes, natural wetlands have been altered or eliminated during the course of historical development. This paper will explore the ecosystem services provided by wetlands that can contribute to agricultural sustainability, how these services have been altered historically, strategies to restore or replace these lost services through wetland creation or restoration, and policy tools such as environmental credit trading that can be used to aid in the restoration process. These topics will be explored against the backdrop of potential short and long term changes in global climate that will also affect agricultural sustainability.