Integrating Climate Change into Wetland Restoration and Protection Management Strategies.

Wetland managers anticipate climate change will lead to  losses, gains, and alterations in wetland resources across the country.  Specific wetland types are threatened in different ways.  For example even with stable rainfall, higher temperatures and evapotranspiration rates may dry out ephemeral wetlands such as prairie potholes and playas.  Rising sea levels may eliminate coastal wetlands unable to migrate inland.  Increased rainfall in the northeast may change some wetlands from ephemeral to perennial.  At the same time wetland protection and restoration strategies may provide cost-effective methods of delivering important services to human populations to ease the impacts of climate change.  There are many benefits for human, plant and wildlife populations that can be realized through wetland protection and restoration.  These include  sustaining water supplies, attenuating floods, sequestering carbon and moderating storm surges. Understanding soils,  is increasingly recognized as an important component of developing effective approaches to climate change for wetlands.  Correct management of soils in conjunction with hydrology is often the difference between project success and failure.     This presentation will provide information on how state and other wetland managers across the country are responding to climate change with long range strategies, improved restoration techniques, increased attention to invasive species management, new evaluations of carbon sequestration opportunities in temperate climates and innovative approaches to providing ecosystem services such as beaver re-introduction in the montane West.