From Duke to the Everglades to Iraq
Curtis Richardson's Wetland Journey Sheds New Light on One
of Nature's Historically Maligned Assets p.2
Richardson continued his wetlands research when he moved
to Duke in 1978. His first focus was a wetland type the Algonquins
called “pocosin,” meaning “swamp on a hill.”
These are characteristically festooned with a briery plant
called smilax, which occasionally ensnares his students. Although
negotiating pocosins can be difficult, they serve as vital
havens for black bear, red wolves, red cockaded woodpeckers
and insect-trapping pitcher plants.
While working with his students to revise the map of pocosins
in coastal North Carolina, “I became convinced that
they were under a great threat,” he recalled. ‘We
determined that one third of them were totally developed.”
Another third were well on the way. Pocosins were especially
vulnerable because they were not being adequately protected
by the dredge and fill permit requirements of the U.S. Clean
Water Act, he explains.
Richardson set up a conference that launched further research
that he says demonstrated the importance of pocosins in maintaining
the ecological health of the state’s tidal estuaries.
Estuaries are vital shallow-water fish nursery areas where
fresh and brackish water co-mingle.
Richardson and a doctoral student also did an early research
project for the Tennessee Valley Authority assessing whether
artificial wetlands constructed on-site could successfully
treat acid wastewater flowing from abandoned coal mines on
the Alabama-Tennessee border. Richardson learned that “they’re
quite effective if they’re put in correctly,”
he says. “There are probably more than 1,000 constructed
wetlands in the South alone today.”
At Richardson’s urging, the Wetland Center was formally
created by Duke’s Board of Trustees in 1990 within what
was then the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Because of that school’s education and research programs,
combined with those at the Duke Marine Laboratory in coastal
Beaufort, the university saw itself “uniquely positioned
to address both regional and national wetlands issues,”
according to a brochure at the time.
A year before the center’s inception, Richardson and
his co-researchers and graduate students had already become
involved in one of the nation’s hottest and most tempestuous
regional and national issues involving wetlands: What to do
about Florida’s Everglades.
Their initial scientific question involved cattails that,
while familiar as wetland plants, are actually invaders in
the Everglades. Officials were concerned about cattail encroachments
into the indigenous carpets of sedge that Richardson says
are commonly called sawgrass.
Phosphorous fertilizers from nearby South Florida farming
operations were suspected to be encouraging the cattail invasion.
But Richardson, who is an expert in phosphorous biogeochemistry,
found that the problem wasn’t that simple. Phosphorous
was the main culprit but other factors like changing water
levels and other nutrient additions exacerbated the problem.
The wetland center’s 13 years of research has established
that the Everglades are actually one of the world’s
most “nutrient-poor” wetlands, with little phosphorus
but an amazing amount of nitrogen naturally present in the
wetland’s water. The main argument centered on how much
phosphorus could be added to the system before plant and animal
populations begin responding inappropriately.
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