Abstract
Humans have caused both landscape change and climate change, leading to ecological calamities around the world in freshwater and coastal waters. Harmful algal blooms (HABs), more common and wicked because of excessive and nonstop fertilization and runoff from farms and urban areas, are accelerated by climatic increases of water temperatures and stormwater runoff from agriculture fields and cities. The world has lost an estimated 87% of its wetlands, with half of that loss occurring in the twentieth century alone, yet wetlands have been demonstrated to be effective nutrient sinks in hundreds if not thousands of case studies, some for long periods (>20 years) and some at very large scale of 20,000 ha or more.
A new nutrient recycling approach applicable to agricultural landscapes around the world called “wetlaculture” (wetlands + agriculture) could help solve downstream nutrient pollution problems while decreasing the amount of fertilizers added to landscapes. We established three field physical models of replicated wetlaculture mesocosm compounds in 2016 to 2018, two in temperate Ohio and one in subtropical south Florida, for estimating the effectiveness and amount of time needed for wetlands to accumulate nutrients before the wetlands are “flipped” to agriculture that can use the captured nutrients. Early results show significant nutrient retention by the wetland phase of the mesocosm experiments in Ohio. Those mesocosm experiments also allowed us to estimate the importance of hydrologic loading, water depth, seasonal flooding, and vegetation cover. In addition, a preliminary business model suggests that farmers and investors could make profits comparable to crops by receiving payment for ecosystem services (PES) coupled with publicly sold environmental bonds available to investors.
