Department of Biology, University of Waterloo, B2-251 Biology, 200 University Ave. W., Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada.
Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, T6G 2H1, Canada.
Water Res. 2015 Apr 15;73:17-28. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2014.12.035. Epub 2015 Jan 20.
Urban expansion replaces wetlands of natural origin with artificial stormwater management facilities. The literature suggests that efforts to mimic natural wetlands in the design of stormwater facilities can expand the provision of ecosystem services. Policy developments seek to capitalize on these improvements, encouraging developers to build stormwater wetlands in place of stormwater ponds; however, few have compared the biophysical values and social perceptions of these created wetlands to those of the natural wetlands they are replacing. We compared four types of wetlands: natural references sites, natural wetlands impacted by agriculture, created stormwater wetlands, and created stormwater ponds. We anticipated that they would exhibit a gradient in biodiversity, ecological integrity, chemical and hydrologic stress. We further anticipated that perceived values would mirror measured biophysical values. We found higher biophysical values associated with wetlands of natural origin (both reference and agriculturally impacted). The biophysical values of stormwater wetlands and stormwater ponds were lower and indistinguishable from one another. The perceived wetland values assessed by the public differed from the observed biophysical values. This has important policy implications, as the public are not likely to perceive the loss of values associated with the replacement of natural wetlands with created stormwater management facilities. We conclude that 1) agriculturally impacted wetlands provide biophysical values equivalent to those of natural wetlands, meaning that land use alone is not a great predictor of wetland value; 2) stormwater wetlands are not a substantive improvement over stormwater ponds, relative to wetlands of natural origin; 3) stormwater wetlands are poor mimics of natural wetlands, likely due to fundamental distinctions in terms of basin morphology, temporal variation in hydrology, ground water connectivity, and landscape position; 4) these drivers are relatively fixed, thus, once constructed, it may not be possible to modify them to improve provision of biophysical values; 5) these fixed drivers are not well perceived by the public and thus public perception may not capture the true value of natural wetlands, including those impacted by agriculture.
城市扩张用人工雨水管理设施取代天然湿地。文献表明,在雨水设施设计中努力模仿天然湿地可以扩大生态系统服务的提供。政策制定者试图利用这些改进,鼓励开发商在雨水湿地而不是雨水池塘中建造雨水湿地;然而,很少有研究将这些人工湿地的生物物理价值和社会认知与它们所替代的天然湿地进行比较。我们比较了四种湿地:天然参考点、受农业影响的天然湿地、人工雨水湿地和人工雨水池塘。我们预计它们会表现出生物多样性、生态完整性、化学和水文压力的梯度。我们进一步预期,感知价值将反映测量的生物物理价值。我们发现与天然起源的湿地(参考湿地和受农业影响的湿地)相比,具有更高的生物物理价值。雨水湿地和雨水池塘的生物物理价值较低,彼此之间无法区分。公众评估的湿地感知价值与观察到的生物物理价值不同。这具有重要的政策意义,因为公众不太可能意识到用人工雨水管理设施替代天然湿地所带来的价值损失。我们得出结论:1)受农业影响的湿地提供与天然湿地相当的生物物理价值,这意味着土地利用本身并不是湿地价值的重要预测因素;2)与天然湿地相比,雨水湿地并不是雨水池塘的实质性改进;3)雨水湿地是天然湿地的较差模仿者,可能是由于盆地形态、水文学时间变化、地下水连通性和景观位置方面的根本差异;4)这些驱动因素相对固定,因此,一旦建成,可能无法修改它们以提高生物物理价值的提供;5)这些固定的驱动因素不为公众所理解,因此公众的认知可能无法捕捉到天然湿地的真正价值,包括受农业影响的湿地。