We are IntechOpen,

the world’s leading publisher of

Open Access books
Built by scientists, for scientists

4,200
Open access books available
116,000
International authors and editors
125M
Downloads

Our authors are among the

154
Countries delivered to
TOP 1%
most cited scientists
12.2%
Contributors from top 500 universities

Selection of our books indexed in the Book Citation Index

in Web of Science™ Core Collection (BKCI)

Interested in publishing with us?

Contact [email protected]
Numbers displayed above are based on latest data collected.
For more information visit www.intechopen.com
 Chapter 1

Introductory Chapter: Wetland Importance and

Management

Didem Gokce
Didem Gokce

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82456

1. Introduction

Water is an important resource for all living beings. Therefore, the use of water and its supply
from sources are very important. Wetlands are an ecosystem from mangrove to subarctic
peatlands that have affected human. The earliest civilizations were established near the river,
lake, and floodplains [1]. The Mesopotamian civilization is authoritatively accepted to have
started around 4000–3500 BC between the Euphrates and Tigris River. The other ancestral
civilization, Egypt, commenced in the Nile Valley at around 3200 BC. This represents the
importance of the water and wetlands. The fact that people are in these regions is a reflection
of how important it is for biotic diversity. Therefore, wetlands are a very critical ecosystem,
and some of them are the most productive habitats.

Wetlands occur where the water table is at or near the surface of the land or where the
land is covered by water [2]. Wetlands are the only ecosystems for whose conservation an
international convention (Ramsar Convention) had been adopted as early as 1971. Ramsar
Convention defined wetlands as “areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or
artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt,
including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six meters” [2].
Wetlands have about 6% of the earth although they play an important role in hydrology and
include mangroves, peatlands and marshes, rivers and lakes, deltas, floodplains and flooded
forests, and even coral reefs. A wetland is a generalized concept including coastal wetlands. It
exists in every climatic region, ranging from the polar zones to the arid zones.

Many wetlands are transitional area between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. These eco-
systems are divided into two groups depending on the quantity of water: permanent and
temporal flooded. Since wetlands are distributed in many different habitats on earth, they

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons
© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative
Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
4 Wetlands Management - Assessing Risk and Sustainable Solutions

reflect different responses and behaviors to environmental changes. Therefore, wetland clas-
sification is important, and differences can be found. It is basically divided into natural and
human-made constructed wetlands. In general, abiotic environmental factors, habitat differ-
ences, and biotic factors are considered to have a wide range of classification. Physical, chemi-
cal, and sediment quality determine wetland functions and classification. These situations
classify its types [3].
Wetland ecosystems rapidly get worse due to various reasons. The environmental quality
gradually deteriorates, and biotic diversity decreases in these habitats. It is estimated that
more than 50% of specific wetland types in Europe, North America, Australia, and New
Zealand were modified or changed during the twentieth century [4, 5]. Coastal wetland eco-
systems are under extreme pressure, and it is estimated that about 35% of mangrove have
been lost during the last two decades due to increasing agricultural area, deforestation, and
freshwater reduction [6, 7].
Monitoring is the long-term regular observation and recording of current and altering situa-
tions. In the environmental assessment, these data were utilized to evaluate wetlands based
on decision-making and planning processes. Consequently, wetland surveys have possessed
a multidisciplinary perspective. The fact that the recognition of wetlands supplies many
values for people and is an important case for global conservation has led to an increase in
research and management activity.

2. Importance of wetland management

Because of urbanization, economic growth, industrialization, and increasing population,

more wastes were discharged into nature. Wetlands carry through some beneficial functions
in the protection of whole balance of the nature.
Wetlands are ecologically sensitive systems and provide many significant services to the
human population. The evaluation of wetlands with a multidisciplinary perspective in the
natural sciences and social sciences provides efficient results. This perspective can give an
increased understanding of the processes and problems associated with such strategies. It
is clear that wetlands expose noteworthy economic value (depending on the cost-benefit
analysis) and they are under severe stress. The reasons for wetland loss and deterioration
implicate excessive use, land degradation, urbanization, pollution, climate change, decrease
biotic diversity, and invasive species. Since wetlands are complex multifunctional systems,
they are likely to be the most beneficial if conserved as integrated ecosystems (within a catch-
ment area) rather than their individual component parts.
Anthropogenic activities (urbanization, water and land uses, land cover changes, industrial
activity, pollution, climatic change, etc.) have direct and indirect effects on wetlands. The deg-
radation degree of an ecosystem is depended on temporal variation. Ecosystem recovery level
and duration have two main factors. Firstly, anthropogenic pressures can increase or decrease
due to the usage grade. Secondly, wetland’s carrying capacity is changed due to spatial and
 Introductory Chapter: Wetland Importance and Management 5
http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82456

temporal variation. For these reasons, positive and negative feedback mechanisms at the wet-
land are critical control systems. Therefore, the wetland is considered as holistic ecosystem
perspective from its basin scale. Odum and Soto–Ortiz [8, 9] concluded that the natural bal-
ance is not a steady state and has a homeorhesis. As shown in Figure 1, the feedback mecha-
nism occurs to control the wetland ecosystem dynamics. In the natural ecosystems, feedback
control processes are repeated between environmental factors and population growth rates
in their carrying capacities. However, when the human population intervenes and extremely
uses wetlands, this tolerance is destructed, and ecosystems wander off their homeorhesis.
The exponential human population growth reflects why environmental problems appear
suddenly [10]. Due to the excess use of wetlands in different ways in time, wetlands have lost

Figure 1. Comparison of natural wetlands (a) and human effects on wetlands (b). Many complex relationships exist in a
wetland. Ecosystem feedback control mechanisms play a critical role in the functioning of wetland balance (homeorhesis).
6 Wetlands Management - Assessing Risk and Sustainable Solutions

Figure 2. The summary of an effective wetland management process.

completely their natural feedback process. The exponential growth in natural resource utili-
zation and the pollution from industrialization can reach the limits of ecosystems to provide
the resource [9–11]. Eighty-seven percent of the wetlands in the world have been lost since
1700. Wetlands have been damaged by anthropogenic sources three times faster than natural
forests. Therefore, there are direct and indirect negative impacts on biodiversity and carbon
sequestration. Eighty-one percent of inland wetland species and 36% of coastal and marine
species have been influenced since 1970 [2].
 Introductory Chapter: Wetland Importance and Management 7
http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82456

Wetlands in and around city provide significant services such as water supply and climate
regulation [12]. However, the value of these ecosystems remains largely unrecognized by
policy- and decision-makers [13].
We need to accept natural balance and geochemical cycles as a wetland ecosystem modulator.
Assessment of water quality is classified based on physical, chemical, and biological param-
eters. While physicochemical characteristics are defined as snapshot industrial pollution, any
change in water quality has a controlling effect on integrated community structure. The fauna
and flora compositions not only reflect the certain situation of ecosystems but also the previ-
ous situation of habitat quality. Bioindicator species that occur according to environmental
quality factors are the more reliable assessment for long-term ecological effects in wetland
quality. Moreover, biological quality and monitoring give strong evidence for ecosystem
problem (Figure 2). Water monitoring and assessment develop based on biology, hydrology,
and water chemistry. In addition, nowadays, geographic information system and remote sens-
ing data detect any change in the wetland area, vegetation cover, and the water level in spatial
and temporal variation and supply crucial information about habitat variations [14–17].
Managing wetland ecosystems gives a substantial contribution to biodiversity conservation
and restoration. Also, it may be actualized with a holistically multidisciplinary strategy. The
variation of management strategy may be caused by a more different urban wetland area with
various levels of success.
It needs decision-makers who are involved in different management strategies to cause res-
toration and improvement of an ecosystem due to globally ecological and regional economic
values of wetlands. Therefore, integrated decision-making process and wetland perspective
provide a sustainable ecosystem management and utilization of wetland resources.

Consequently, an effective management plan provides a crucial basis for maintaining the bio-
ecological characteristics of a wetland, a dynamic ecosystem, and allowing to use resources
economically.

3. Wetlands in the future

Wetlands that may be accepted as ecosystems on edge because of their importance for the
future have gained a crucial role to climatic change. Wetland management policies and simu-
lations of their ability to absorb major quantities of carbon from the atmosphere as more than
five times from tropical forest show an important solution in future climate [6, 12, 18–21].
It seems clear that wetlands are balanced due to mechanism of geochemical cycles (natural
control-feedback mechanism).

As a result of the floods increasing based on climate change, the decrease in drinking water
and the increasing human population, the future tasks of wetlands on the negative effects
of urbanization are increasing for sustainable urban. It is estimated that at least 64 of the
global wetlands have disappeared since 1900 due to cities and exponential human popula-
tion growth. For this reason, the main mechanism of pollution removal from domestic and
industrial wastewater in constructed wetlands will have much importance in their fixation
8 Wetlands Management - Assessing Risk and Sustainable Solutions

and precipitation capacities [22]. Furthermore, constructed wetland systems would be good
alternative technologies in the future, which have wastewater treatment standards as com-
pared to conventional methods [23, 24].
We would also like to stress the great potential that such investigations have in the under-
standing and protection of these fragile, but extremely important, coastal ecosystems and
encourage their incorporation into future wetland management tools.
Wetland degradation usually impacts environmental quality and can lead to major changes in
the community composition. Therefore, a recent paradigm that alters within wetland science
toward integration of social, all environmental, and life sciences is further appealing to the
historical linkage between wetland and special kinds of science today.

Modern wetland science has become a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and sometimes

transdisciplinary study that melds the social with the life sciences to understand wetlands as
social-ecological systems.

4. Conclusions

The wetland ecosystems have vital values and functions in the world. Human (control-
ling factor), as an ecosystem stakeholder, benefit from this. Rapidly developing technology
enables us to better understand the planet we live in. Due to technological development
and increasing human population, all ecosystems are inevitably deteriorated by domestic,
agricultural, and industrial pollution; climate change; reducing biodiversity; invasive
species; and change of land use. Sustainability includes a greater and more explicitly
long-term situation and target than environmental quality increment. Sustainable envi-
ronmental management depends mainly on ecosystem stability, ecologic tolerance, and
biotic diversity. Sustainable environmental management plans need to be implemented
and controlled.
Therefore, the role of decision-maker authority is important. The fact that the research insti-
tutes and the sciences in different disciplines form a consortium and maintain their manage-
ment plans with a holistic approach has a critical value in this respect. Due to the different
kinds of wetlands and the case study of multidisciplinary approaches in the world, the book
Wetlands Management: Assessing Risk and Sustainable Solutions can be considered as an impor-
tant source.

Author details

Didem Gokce
Address all correspondence to: [email protected]
Department of Biology, Inonu University, Malatya, Turkey
 Introductory Chapter: Wetland Importance and Management 9
http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.82456

References

[1] Keddy PA. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press; 2000. p. 614. ISBN: 0-521-78367-4. DOI: 10.4319/lo.2001.46.6.1581
[2] Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Global Wetland Outlook: State of the World’s Wetlands
and their Services to People. Gland, Switzerland: Ramsar Convention Secretariat; 2018.
p. 88
[3] Finlayson CM, Spiers AG. A Compendium of Information for Managing and Monitoring
Wetlands in Tropical Australia [Internet]. Supervising Scientist Report 148, Supervising
Scientist, Canberra; 1999. ISBN: 0-642-24351-4. Available from: https://www.environ-
ment.gov.au/system/files/resources/3313060e-07eb-40f0-aa07-66ef97240ee7/files/ssr148.
pdf [Accessed: 05-11-2018]
[4] Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Wetlands and
Water: Synthesis. Washington: Water Resources Institute; 2005, 2005. ISBN: 1-56973-597-2
[5] Smardon R. International Wetlands Policy and Management Issues. National Wetlands
Newsletter. 2015;37:10-16
[6] Davidson NC. How much wetland has the world lost? Long-term and recent trends in
global wetland area. Marine and Freshwater Research. 2014;65:936-941. DOI: 10.1071/
MF14173
[7] Kevin LE. Wetlands and global climate change: The role of wetland restoration in a
changing world. Wetlands Ecology and Management. 2009;17:71-84. DOI: 10.1007/
s11273-008-9119-1
[8] Odum EP. Tidal marshes as out welling/pulsing systems. In: Weinstein MP, Kreeger
DA, editors. Concepts and Controversies in Tidal Marsh Ecology. Kluwer Academic
Publishers; 2002, 2002. pp. 3-7. DOI: 10.1007/0-306-47534-0_1
[9] Soto-Ortiz L. The regulation of ecological communities through feedback loops: A
review. Research in Zoology. 2015;5:1-15. DOI: 10.5923/j.zoology.20150501.01
[10] Marten GG. Human Ecology: Basic Concepts for Sustainable Development. NY:
Earthscan Publications; 2009. p. 256. ISBN: 978-1853837142
[11] Zari MP. Ecosystem services analysis in response to biodiversity loss caused by the built
environment [Internet]. Surveys and Perspectives Integrating Environment and Society.
2014;7:1-14. Available from: http://journals.openedition.org/sapiens/1684 [Accessed:
29-10-2018]
[12] Kusler J. Wetland, Climate Change, and Carbon Sequestering [Internet]. 2018. Available
from: http://www.aswm.org [Accessed: 10-10-2018]
[13] Catherine E, Benson CE, Carberry B, Langen TA. Public–private partnership wet-
land restoration programs benefit Species of Greatest Conservation Need and other
10 Wetlands Management - Assessing Risk and Sustainable Solutions

wetland-associated wildlife. Wetlands Ecology and Management. 2018;26:195-211. DOI:

10.1007/s11273-017-9565-8
[14] Guo M, Li J, Sheng C, Xu J, Wu L. A review of wetland remote sensing. Sensors.
2017;17:777. DOI: 10.3390/s17040777
[15] Fickas KC, Cohen WB, Yang Z. Landsat-based monitoring of annual wetland change
in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, USA from 1972 to 2012. Wetlands Ecology and
Management. 2016;24:73-92. DOI: 10.1007/s11273-015-9452-0

[16] Kalacska M, Arroyo-Mora JP, Soffer RJ, Roulet NT, Moore TR, Humphreys E, et al.
Estimating peatland water table depth and net ecosystem exchange: A comparison
between satellite and airborne imagery. Remote Sensing. 2018;10:687. DOI: 10.3390/
rs10050687

[17] Giardino C, Bresciani M, Fava F, Matta E, Brando V, Colombo R. Mapping submerged

habitats and mangroves of Lampi Island Marine National Park (Myanmar) from in situ
and satellite observations. Remote Sensing. 2015;8:2. DOI: 10.3390/rs8010002
[18] Sizo A, Noble B, Bell S. Futures analysis of urban land use and wetland change in
Saskatoon, Canada: An application in strategic environmental assessment. Sustainability.
2015;7:811-830. DOI: 10.3390/su7010811

[19] Narayan S, Beck M. As Communities Rebuild After Hurricanes, Study Shows Wetlands
can Significantly Reduce Property Damage [Internet]. 2017. Available from: http://www.
conversation.com_83935 [Accessed: 12-10-2018]

[20] Barros DF, Albernaz ALM. Possible impacts of climate change on wetlands and its
biota in the Brazilian Amazon. Brazilian Journal of Biology. 2014;74:810-820. DOI:
10.1590/1519-6984.04013
[21] Meng L, Roulet N, Zhuang Q, Christensen TR, Frolking S. Focus on the impact of climate
change on wetland ecosystems and carbon dynamics. Environmental Research Letters.
2016;11. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/100201

[22] Kalbar PP, Karmakar S, Asolekar SR. Selection of appropriate wastewater treatment
technology: Scenario based multiple-attribute decision-making approach. Journal of
Environmental Management. 2012;113:158-169. DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.08.025
[23] Wu H, Zhang J, Ngo HH, Guo W, Hu Z, Liang S, et al. A review on the sustainability
of constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment: Design and operation. Bioresource
Technology. 2015;175:594-601. DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2014.10.068

[24] Maiga Y, von Sperling M, Mihelcic JR. Constructed wetlands. In: Rose JB, Jiménez-
Cisneros B, editors. Global Water Pathogen Project, Part 4 Management of Risk from
Excreta and Wastewater. Michigan State University: UNESCO; 2017. DOI: 10.14321/
waterpathogens.66. Available from: http://www.waterpathogens.org/book/constructed-
wetlands [Accessed: 06-11-2018]