Research Summaries
- Introduction
- The Challenge
- Research Is Needed To
- Selected Current and Proposed Research
- Research Facilities
- Funding
- Experiments
Introduction
Perhaps no single environmental issue has so polarized public opinion as the protection of wetlands. Part land, part water, wetlands are ecosystems in which water level and low oxygen support a unique ecological habitat conducive to the development of specific plant and animal species. The hydrologic and biologic nature of wetlands is not clearly understood by the people expected to comply with wetland regulations. Many people are unaware of the connections between surface water and groundwater, and the link between the two that wetlands often provide.
Values ascribed to many wetlands include: providing habitats for fishing, hunting, waterfowl; timber harvesting; wastewater assimilation; improving water quality; flood control; and providing recreational values. These perceived values arise directly from the ecological functions found within wetlands. Ecosystem functions include hydrologic transfers and storage of water, biogeochemical transformations, maintaining atmospheric carbon balance, primary productivity, decomposition, and community/habitat.
Analysis of the relationship among wetland functions and values show that over utilization of intensive removal of wetland values (e.g. timber harvesting with drainage, peat harvesting) can often result in a loss of specific wetland functions (e.g. decreased water storage).
Further complicating the issue of appropriate wetland resource management, people want both the unfettered right to use their own land and the right to use unpolluted waters. The Duke Wetland Center is dedicated to focus on theses important issues and to provide a forum for scientific and policy analyses.
Challenge
The challenge facing society is to determine how to manage our remaining wetland ecosystems, or construct new wetlands, to sustain ecological functions, maintaining hydrologic integrity and community structure, while allowing compatible development on adjacent landscapes.
Research Is Needed To:
Assess the
impact of human values on ecological functions in wetlands
Develop
restoration or reconstruction wetland procedures that result in functional replacement of
wetlands
Devise best
management practices for forestry and agriculture in or adjacent to wetlands to maintain
water quality
Address
wetland ecosystem functions and values with respect to upland systems on the landscape
Determine methods to evaluate wetland functions beyond their boundaries and
far from adjacent landscapes
Evaluate
wetlands in terms of scientific, economic and recreational factors
Selected Current and Proposed Research Activities:
Integrating
ecological wetland functions and human wetland values.
Functional
assessment of constructed wetlands versus natural wetlands.
Restoration
of wetlands.
Everglades
Research–An overview of the Duke University Wetland
Center's Everglades Research Programs, 1990-2002, is available in PDF
format. Various aspects of that research include:
ERIM teams up with Duke University to conduct groundbreaking water
research. Using radar from remote sensing platforms to calibrate and verify surface
hydrology models in Big Cypress National Preserve.
Assessment
of wetland ecosystem functional response to highways.
Paleoecological studies of wetlands and estuaries
Wetland
hydrology, paleohydrology
and hydrologic evolution.
Research Facilities
On the cutting edge of environmental teaching and research initiatives, Duke University's Wetland Center and the duke Marine Laboratory are uniquely positioned to create wetland science management and conservation technologies and policies. Duke scientists, having recognized the urgency for integrated multidisciplinary research, established the nation;s first School of the Environment. As part of this School, the Wetland Center is housed in the new state-of-the-art Levine Science Research Center, a building facility unmatched disciplines can coalesce around the most critical wetlands issues. For more than 55 years, Duke has provided excellent ecology, botany, geology, zoology, forestry, coastal management and marine science, natural resource economics and policy, and environmental management.
As part of a major research university, the center is able to add a significant dimension to teaching and research through cross-campus interdisciplinary degree programs, faculty appointments, and cooperative projects, The faculty members in Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and the Departments of Botany, Zoology, and Geology. The Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy and Schools of Law, Business, and Engineering are among other academic units providing interdisciplinary support to the research being conducted at the Center. By reciprocity agreement, Duke students may also take courses at the nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University in Raleigh.
While researchers have the advantage of state-of-science facilities and a large wetlands library on the Duke campus, North Carolina itself provides an exceptional outdoor laboratory, containing over 5 million acres of diverse freshwater and saltwater wetlands, including pocosins. Carolina bays, mountain bogs, freshwater and saltwater marshes, and bottomland hardwoods.
The Marine Laboratory is a 15-acre campus located 180 miles east of Duke's main campus. It is situated on Pivers Island within the Outer Banks of North Carolina and adjacent to the historic town of Beaufort. Overlooking North Carolina;s system of barrier islands, sounds and estuaries,m the Marine Lab is bordered by Core Banks and Bogue Banks. the area is well known for its rich flora and fauna, and scenic coastal and wetland landscape.
DUKE WETLAND CENTER LABORATORY AND FIELD STATION: FACILITIES AND EQUIPMENT
Laboratory: The Wetland Center is housed on the main campus at Duke University in the new 300,000 square foot Levine Science Research Center. Part of the Nicholas School of the Environment, the Duke Wetland Center has chemical analysis labs, an ultra-clean room, microbial labs with two laminar flow hoods, and dedicated radioisotope facilities.
Ultra Clean Lab: The Wetland Center has a state of the art ultra-clean lab for trace metal analysis.
Field Station: The Duke University Wetland Center maintains a field station with laboratory facilities near the Everglades Water Conservation Area 2A (WCA-2A) and Everglades Agricultural Area, in Florida. The station has an airboat and three field vehicles. The lab has sample preparation areas, a spectrophotometer, a centrifuge, a drying oven, freezers, refrigerators, D.O., pH, and redox meters, Hydrolabs, and deionized water.
Mesocosm site: In the marsh area of WCA-2A, the Wetland Center maintains a set of 6 experimental channels at two sites. Phosphate has been added in a series of differing input concentrations nearly continuously since November 1992, and concentrations are monitored biweekly. Wet and dry atmospheric deposition are collected continuously.
