David Kunz
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Re:Question open to discussion - 2007/12/13 00:37
If you are still monitoring this post, absolutely, it?s a matter of balancing a savings account, but it also depends on the wetland. Science shows us that the destruction of peat forming wetlands has a direct effect on global climate change. Peat forming wetlands act as carbon sinks. I like to think of Peat as pre-coal, pleatlands (pocosins, bogs, mires, and many marshes) are simply young coal beds, on the order of thousands of years old vs. coal beds which are a few orders of magnitude older, millions of years and more experienced in terms of catastrophic geologic events. Pleatlands are the result of vegetation communities adapted to growing in saturated soils that facilitate photosynthesis. Peat forming wetlands essentially suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, process it into organic carbon and store it while splitting out the oxygen. So how is this any different then a non-wetland forest? When the vegetation in a peatland dies, it does not decompose completely. Much of the now organic carbon is sequestered in the peat because the lack of oxygen in the saturated substrate significantly reduces the rate of decomposition to almost nothing. In a non-wetland forest, when the vegetation dies, it falls over and lies on the ground exposed to sun, air, and water, the three essential ingredients of decomposition. In a peatland environment however, oxygen and sunlight light are missing, the only thing available is water. So when you destroy a peatland, you stop the process of storing carbon in the earth.
In addition, by simply removing the vegetation from a wetland, or any land for that matter, we are reducing the area of land that is biologically functioning to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Therefore by expanding developed land we increase CO2 producing human energy consumption and reduce CO2 consuming biologically evolved infrastructure leading to a net increase in CO2 in our atmosphere. If we (society) understand the science, it?s a no brainier. Its just like balancing a checking account, spend more, it gets smaller, spend less, it gets larger.
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