My graduate school research was done in a rural agricultural watershed in southern Georgia.
There were cattle pastures and fields of corn, soybeans, winter vegetables, peanuts, and cotton. One site was downslope from a hog pen.
Between the agricultural uplands and the Little River (a tributary of the Suwanee River) there were beautiful forests with magnolias, tulip-trees, maples, gums, mosquitoes, and a few water moccasins. The forests stayed wet much of the year – too wet to drain and plough.
Water in the Little River was clean and pure where researchers had installed a weir with a sampling device. Our job was to figure out why. The fields and pastures received copious quantities of fertilizers and/or animal manure from the cattle and hogs.
I sampled soils and measured nitrogen gases released to the atmosphere by bacteria. The hog pen site was my favourite. The adjacent forest emitted tremendous quantities of nitrogen. Further downslope the agricultural pollution disappeared, sent into the atmosphere by soil bacteria or taken up by trees.
The forest next to the hog pen was called Shaky Bay. The trees grew on organic soil that stayed wet year-round and moved when you walked on it. The tulip-trees had roots sticking up in the air.
I also sampled soils in the agricultural areas (except for the hog pen). They emitted lots of three greenhouse gases (GHGs): carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Forest edges tended to also be prolific GHG emitters, but in wetter forests near the stream bed GHG emissions virtually disappeared.
The forests were sequestering carbon and cleaning up pollution from the upland agricultural areas.
Fast forward 40 years to the wetlands and forests in the Greenbelt around the central core of Ottawa.
Eastern Ontario is flat, with extensive wetlands, in the ancient bed of the Champlain Sea. White settlers tried to drain essentially all of it.
The largest wetland in the Greenbelt, Mer Bleue, remains mainly intact. It is a true peat bog that sequesters huge amounts of carbon. Even 10,000 years after the retreat of the glaciers, Mer Bleue had a net carbon uptake every year during 1998-2001, despite higher-than-average temperatures and one dry summer.
The nearby Pine Grove area has some smaller un-drained wetlands. Like Shaky Bay, it has wet forests where trees grow happily despite having their roots in water throughout the spring.
Wetlands and forests soak up the crap we dig up from the oil sands and spew out of our motor vehicles.
Unfortunately, despite runaway climate change, destruction of these natural assets continues unabated right in your neighbourhood. We need a global commitment to let Mother Earth do her thing.
Let existing forests grow and soak up more carbon (proforestation). Where there are no forests, create them. Let leaves and fallen branches accumulate under planted trees. Don’t drain wetlands.
Planting trees is not enough – we have to create complete new forests, with native plant species that support healthy populations of bees, birds, and the caterpillars they need to feed their young.
We can restore nature in the vast areas of agricultural land currently devoted to growing cattle feed for fast-food hamburger chains. We can restore nature in our cities, reforesting yards, even replacing streets with linear forests.
Don’t do this for future generations, do it for you. You’ll be happier, like those trees with their roots in the water.
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