William J Mitsch

• Ph.D. in Systems Ecology
• Chair at Florida Gulf Coast University

The single most important book on wetlands, newly expanded and updated Wetlands is the definitive guide to this fragile ecosystem, providing the most comprehensive coverage and in-depth information available in print. Recently updated and expanded, this latest edition contains brand new information on Wetland Ecosystem Services and an updated disc...

Coastal human settlements are becoming increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters such as tsunamis and cyclones. Recent events, including the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, have brought the issue of coastal protection to the forefront in many countries across the globe. We conducted a review of recent research regarding...

Wetlands provide many ecosystem services to society, most notably the provision of habitat for important plants and animals, the improvement of water quality, and the sequestration of carbon. Nitrogen and phosphorus budgets, vegetation structure and function, and carbon fluxes and accumulation are described for a pair of 1-ha created riverine wetla...

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made it clear that a reduction in carbon emissions and a promotion in carbon sequestration are necessary in order to prevent the planet from reaching catastrophic warming levels of 1.5 °C globally. The IPCC identifies the investment in “high‑carbon ecosystems” as a potential mitigation strategy,...

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 sto...

Afforestation has been suggested as an ecosystem restoration approach for mitigating carbon loss after land-use changes. Understanding soil organic carbon (SOC) by conversion from abandoned aquaculture ponds to affor-estation is crucial. We investigated soil organic carbon from a poplar (Populus spp., 19 years after planting, PS) plantation site wi...

Phosphorus (P) scarcity and the environmental hazards posed by P discharges have triggered the development of technologies for P sequestration and removal from waste streams. Agriculture runoff usually has P concentrations high enough to contribute to eutrophication and harmful algal blooms, but they are still too low for successful P removal with...

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are increasing in frequency and severity worldwide due to nonpoint source nutrient pollution, mainly a product of agricultural runoff. This issue is compounded by the steady, global loss of wetlands and their water quality services. Wetlaculture, an integrated system of wetlands and agriculture, has been proposed as a so...

Mangrove wetlands are important ecosystems, yet human development coupled with climate change threatens mangroves and their large carbon stores. This study seeks to understand the soil carbon dynamics in hydrologically altered mangrove swamps by studying aboveground biomass estimates and belowground soil carbon concentrations in mangrove swamps wit...

The western basin of Lake Erie, the shallowest of the Laurentian Great Lakes in North America, is now plagued by harmful algal blooms annually due to nutrient discharges primarily from its basin. Water quality was impacted so significantly by toxic cyanobacteria in 2014 that the city of Toledo’s water supply was shut off, affecting hundreds of thou...

Tropical and subtropical mangrove swamps, under normal conditions, can sequester large amounts of carbon in their soils but as coastal wetlands, they are prone to hurricane disturbances. This study adds to the understanding of carbon storage capabilities of mangrove wetlands and explores how these capacities might change within the scope of a chang...

Shallow urban polluted reservoirs at tropical regions can be hotspots for CO2 and CH4 emissions. In this study, we investigated the relationships between eutrophication and GHG emissions in a highly urbanized tropical reservoir in São Paulo Metropolitan Area (Brazil). CO2 and CH4 fluxes and limnological variables (water and sediment) were collected...

A 4.6-ha urban stormwater treatment wetland complex in southwest Florida has been investigated for several years to understand its nutrient retention dynamics. This study investigates the role of aquatic vegetation, both submerged vegetation (such as benthic macrophytic and algal communities) and emergent plant communities, on changes in nutrient f...

While legal regulations require treated wastewater to be tested based only on its physicochemical parameters, surface water assessment also has to include biological indicators. However, neither approach provides a complete picture of water quality due to lack of ecotoxicological information. Therefore, the aim of the study was to perform an ecotox...

The study aimed to assess the usefulness of mineral aggregates in orthophosphate (OP) removal from hypolimnetic water withdrawn from eutrophic lakes. Two low-cost and easily available reactive materials were tested: lightweight expanded clay aggregate (LECA) and crushed limestone (LS). Their performance regarding OP removal and the effect on the pH...

An analysis of nitrate concentrations and isotopic compositions was undertaken on Florida's large (1730 km²) and shallow (mean depth 2.7 m) Lake Okeechobee to determine possible connectivity between the lake's many inflows and outflows and to illustrate how stable isotopes can assist in the restoration of a very large subtropical lake. The Kissimme...

Eutrophication is a widespread global scale pollution problem. Agricultural areas are generally the main contributors to eutrophication, whereas sewage and industrial discharges, which usually receive some treatment prior to discharge, are a secondary source. This is mostly the case of the ultra-oligotrophic Florida Everglades, where natural water...

On 1 March 2019, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly (New York) declared 2021–2030 the “UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.” This call to action has the purpose of recognizing the need to massively accelerate global restoration of degraded ecosystems, to fight the climate heating crisis, enhance food security, provide clean water and protect b...

Preface: This is an updated version of a review written by the author in April 2018 at the request of The Friends of the Everglades, an NGO based in Miami, Florida, on a plan developed primarily by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) to mitigate coastal pollution that has resulted from discharges from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of...

Preface This is an updated version of a review written by the author in April 2018 at the request of The Friends of the Everglades, an NGO based in Miami, Florida, on a plan developed primarily by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) to mitigate coastal pollution that has resulted from discharges from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of M...

A global estimate of C sequestration

Understanding the hydrology of a created or restored wetland is a critical component in understanding the overall functioning of its design, and in determining if the original goals of the wetland are being met. Freedom Park, a 20-ha park constructed in Naples, Florida in 2009, includes a 4.6-ha subtropical stormwater wetland treatment system for i...

Human activities have altered the nitrogen (N) cycle substantially at both local, regional and global levels. As a result, the availability of reactive N in the environment has greatly increased, causing the leaching of nitrogen surface waters, groundwater and oceans and creating eutrophication of freshwater ecosystems, hypoxia in coastal waters an...

The original version of this Article contained an error in the first sentence of the Acknowledgements section, which incorrectly referred to the Estonian Research Council grant identifier as "PUTJD618". The correct version replaces the grant identifier with "PUTJD619". This has been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.

This paper summarizes 19 papers published in a special issue of Ecological Engineering under the general banner of wetlands and carbon. Many of the papers were presented at a special session at EcoSummit 2016 in Montpellier, France in August-September 2016. The papers are in four general categories: estimating greenhouse gas fluxes with eddy covari...

Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a powerful greenhouse gas and the main driver of stratospheric ozone depletion. Since soils are the largest source of N2O, predicting soil response to changes in climate or land use is central to understanding and managing N2O. Here we find that N2O flux can be predicted by models incorporating soil nitrate concentration (NO3...

Rivers were among the first geographical features in the United States (U.S.) to receive official names, often initially stemming from Native American heritage. Today river titles portray both cultural and physical origins. These naming conventions provide a descriptive connotation driven by social perceptions. At present, most people accept that t...

Coastal mangroves have the potential to improve the water quality of urban and rural runoff before it is discharged into adjacent coastal bays and oceans; but they also can be impaired by excessive pollutants from upstream. Nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen), salinity, and other water quality parameters were measured in five mangrove tidal creeks...

This editorial describes a 25-paper special issue that began with a symposium at EcoSummit 2016 in Montpellier France in August/September 2016 with a focus on ecological engineering principles applied to the development of large-scale sustainable landscapes and catchments. The papers are divided into the following categories: watershed management (...

Studies have suggested that some mangrove soils might contribute to wetland methane (CH4) production and emissions, especially when the mangroves are disturbed. CH4 emissions were measured seasonally from nine locations on two mangrove creeks on Naples Bay in southwest Florida, USA. One of the tidal creeks has been impacted in the past few decades...

Few studies have documented urban stormwater nutrient retention by subtropical and tropical wetlands. Freedom Park, in Naples, Florida, USA, is a 4.6-ha created wetland system designed to treat urban stormwater runoff before it impacts downstream ecosystems. The wetland system was specifically designed for nitrogen and phosphorus removal from the w...

Despite the valuable ecosystem services provided by mangrove ecosystems they remain threatened around the globe. Urban development has been a primary cause for mangrove destruction and deterioration in south Florida USA for the last several decades. As a result, the restoration of mangrove forests has become an important topic of research. Using fi...

Hydrologic regimes in tropical and subtropical regions (e.g. hurricanes, tropical storms, and droughts) impact biogeochemical processes in created and restored wetlands with variability of wet/dry seasons and extreme weather events. Our South Florida Wetland Monitoring Network (SFWMN) with three real-time hydrologic, water quality, and meteorologic...

The Florida Everglades depends on both seasonal hydroperiods and low nutrient loading. This study investigated phosphorus concentrations in a 237,000-ha wetland complex in the Greater Florida Everglades known as Water Conservation Area 3A (WCA-3A). WCA-3A is south and downstream of Lake Okeechobee and most of the agricultural activity in the Evergl...

Wetland creation and restoration have been key factors in reducing net loss of wetland habitat in the United States. Creation and restoration techniques, such as introducing vegetation, are perceived to have a long-term effect on wetland structure and function over time. The goal of this study was to compare macrophyte structure and function betwee...

Please cite this article in press as: Pereyra, A.S., Mitsch, W.J., Methane emissions from freshwater cypress (Taxodium distichum) swamp soils with natural and impacted hydroperiods in Southwest Florida. Ecol. Eng. (2017), http://dx. a b s t r a c t Wetlands are natural sources of methane (CH 4) emissions, with the majority of those releases in trop...

Methane (CH4) emissions and carbon uptake in temperate freshwater wetlands act in opposing directions in the context of global radiative forcing. Large uncertainties exist for the rates of CH4 emissions making it difficult to determine the extent that CH4 emissions counteract the carbon sequestration of wetlands. Urban temperate wetlands are typica...

Wetlands are among the best ecosystems for long-term sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere yet they continue to be viewed by many as primarily sources of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly methane. While these carbon fluxes have been compared extensively in boreal and temperate zone wetlands, there are relatively few summaries of field st...

Wetlands are known for providing important ecosystem services, such as reduction of eutrophication. However, less research has focused on public health service of wetlands: their ability to protect microbial quality of water for downstream while they attract wildlife populations. For urban surface water, transmission of antibiotic resistance is als...

Mangrove swamps accumulate a significant amount (45–98 %) of organic carbon in sediments; however, there is a knowledge gap in explaining the mechanism behind this. Through the analysis of substrate samples from a red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle) swamp in southwest Florida, USA, this study investigated whether the “enzymic latch”, which suppresses...

Background Eutrophication of aquatic environments is a major environmental problem in large parts of the world. In Europe, EU legislation (the Water Framework Directive and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive), international conventions (OSPAR, HELCOM) and national environmental objectives emphasize the need to reduce the input of nutrients to...

In a great number of scientific articles on water quality improvement using constructed wetlands (CW) and riparian buffers zones (RBZ) at catchment scale, contradictory results are found. In most cases this is due to underestimating or even ignoring the role of the hydrological factor for water quality improvement. It has often resulted in biased e...

It is important to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from newly created and restored wetlands so that we learn how to design them to minimize these emissions. Spatial and temporal patterns of methane emissions were measured in three wetland marsh complexes in southwest Florida: a created freshwater marsh on a university campus, a restored brackish/...

This study compares carbon sequestration rates along two independent tidal mangrove creeks near Naples Bay in Southwest Florida, USA. One tidal creek is hydrologically disturbed due to upstream land use changes; the other is an undisturbed reference creek. Soil cores were collected in basin, fringe, and riverine hydrogeomorphic settings along each...

Temporal and spatial variations of nitrogen (N) soil storages and fluxes were examined at two 1-ha created riverine wetlands in the U.S. Midwest. Soil N content (total N, organic-N, NO 3-N, and NH 4-N), N accumulation rates, and soil C:N ratios were compared between the two wetlands constructed 15 years earlier (one was planted and the other left t...

Wetlands emit 20 to 25 percent of global methane emissions to Earth’s atmosphere, yet they also have the best capacity of any ecosystem to retain carbon through permanent burial (sequestration). Both processes have implications for climate change. Of the total storage of organic carbon in Earth’s soils, 20 to 30 percent or more is stored in wetland...

Reducing phosphorus (P) concentration in surface water is a primary component of the ongoing effort to restore the Florida Everglades. Engineered wetlands are currently being used to retain P from stormwater inflows but are not consistently achieving outflow P concentration goals. A three-year mesocosm study was performed investigating the effects...

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Constructed wetlands are being utilized to mitigate the impact that excess phosphorus in surface water has on the natural state of the Florida Everglades. This study investigates the role of aquatic metabolism in the retention of phosphorus in wetlands and how it varies with plant community. Eighteen 6-m2 mesocosms receiving inflows with relatively...

Wetlands provide many valuable ecosystem services, including water quality improvement to protect downstream aquatic ecosystems such as lakes, rivers, and estuaries. However, their ability to improve water quality to safe levels for direct human exposure while largely surrounded by agricultural lands and hosting large wildlife populations remains u...

Predicting N2O (nitrous oxide) and CH4 (methane) emissions from peatlands is challenging because of the complex coaction of biogeochemical factors. This study uses data from a global soil and gas sampling campaign. The objective is to analyse N2O and CH4 emissions in terms of peat physical and chemical conditions. Our study areas were evenly distri...

Carbon stable isotopes were used to investigate the contribution of different wetland plant communities commonly found in the Everglades to the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) exported from a mesocosm experiment. The species conforming the different treatments in the mesocosms were: Typha domingensis Pers, Cladium jamaicense Crantz, Nymphaea sp., Ny...

The majority of the methane (CH4) emitted from wetlands comes from tropical and subtropical zones. On a global scale, the variability of these emissions had been attributed to water table variations; however, at landscape scales this variability is poorly understood. We measured CH4 fluxes from five characteristic wetland plant communities of south...

Six large-scale wetland restoration case studies are presented here, three of which relate to ecological engineering of coastlines, and three of which relate to large-scale watershed improvements that in turn lead to improvement of downstream aquatic ecosystems. All of these case studies suggest that there is much more to restoration than returning...

Globally, it is estimated that 513 Pg of carbon (C) is stored in wetlands, or about 20% of the 2500 Pg C in the earth’s carbon pool. Despite the apparent benefit that wetland ecosystems have on the reduction of Earth’s radiative forcing through this C sequestration, possible feedbacks to the atmosphere of C in the form of methane (CH4) introduce ra...

Wetlands provide important ecosystem services and store carbon dioxide but are also an important global source of methane – a potent greenhouse gas. In order to understand the dynamics of methane emissions from a temperate reconstructed wetland, methane fluxes were measured continuously over 2 years using the eddy covariance method in the Olentangy...

Wetlands offer many ecosystem services, including the long-term sequestering of carbon (C) in soil. Here we present a study of C sequestration rates in a relatively undisturbed wetland landscape of southwest Florida. Accordingly, carbon sequestration was determined in four wetland plant communities and an adjacent hydric pine flatwood community tha...

Wetlands have been described as ‘‘ecological supermarkets’’ because of the extensive food chain and rich biodiversity that they support. More recently,wetlands are being described as important water-quality enhancement ecosystems and flood mitigation systems (‘‘natures’ kidneys’’ )and carbon sinks and climate stabilizers on a global scale. These ec...

Detailed carbon budgets from 2008 to 2010 were created for two 1-ha flow-through riverine wetlands created in 1994 adjacent to a third–order stream in central Ohio. Measurements were taken of dissolved non-purgeable organic carbon (NPOC), dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), fine particulate organic carbon (FPOM), and coarse particulate organic carbon...

Estimating net primary productivity of macrophytes is a common practice in wetland research, but much less is done regarding gross primary productivity (GPP) and respiration (R) of wetland macrophyte communities. The purpose of this project was to estimate metabolism (GPP and R) and greenhouse gas emissions (methane) of wetland macrophyte communiti...