Scientists Visit Wetlands as Part of National Study

The scientists crouched by a tiny stream, scrutinizing the scurrying underwater life. Mostly mosquito fish, one concluded. The nonnative fish savors mosquito eggs so much that it has become a popular Southern California form of bug control.

And the stream it was swimming in is fed not by a spring, but by runoff from lawn-watering in a nearby neighborhood.

For biologists visiting from wetter climes, this was a curiosity--a wetlands created by urban runoff and acting as habitat for fish imported from the East Coast. It reminded them again that they were not in Orlando or Seattle, but in an arid state where native wetlands have all but vanished.

But the stream water was clear, the vegetation green and lush in the William Mason Park restoration project in Irvine, one of six Orange County wetland sites visited Tuesday by a panel of experts from the National Academy of Sciences. And local wetland experts praised the project for making good use of urban runoff, a fact of life in a corner of California crisscrossed with irrigation lines.

“I thought this was a very nice site, because they’ve managed to capture a lot of physical processes,” said Richard F. Ambrose, associate professor in the UCLA environmental and engineering program.

The Tuesday tour brought together scientists from across the United States who are conducting a major study of how well people can restore or even create wetlands. The study is assessing the success of the current federal system that allows developers to destroy wetlands if they agree to revive or create wetland habitat elsewhere.

The panel already has visited restoration sites near Orlando, Fla., and Northbrook, Ill., but this week marks its first visit to arid Southern California, where more than 90% of historic wetlands have been filled, diked or drained.

Several local scientists said they are encouraged the National Academy panel visited Southern California as part of its study. Too often, they said, federal regulations are written with East Coast conditions in mind, aided by wetlands experts unfamiliar with the types of streams and wetlands existing in dry climates.

Intense development pressures and the lack of rainfall pose special challenges restoring wetlands here, several panel scientists agreed.

Charles Simenstad traveled from Seattle, which gets more than 40 inches of rainfall annually, compared with 12 inches in Orange County. A fisheries biologist at the University of Washington, he coordinates a wetland ecosystems team. But restoring wetlands can be much easier in Washington, with its plentiful rainfall and larger pieces of remaining wetlands.

By contrast, little remains of Southern California’s historic water patterns after more than a century of channeling streams in concrete and draining swamps for development.

“It’s a lot more challenging than other places,” Simenstad said as he toured a troubled wetlands project called the Aliso Creek Wildlife Habitat Enhancement Project, where a new dam was supposed to irrigate a restored wetlands downstream. The project faltered because of silting upstream from the dam and damage from El Nino and other storms.

“You come and visit a place like this, and you tend to get more pessimistic, more skeptical,” Simenstad said.

The panel started the day with a visit to the Talbert Marsh in Huntington Beach. They also toured two projects overseen by the Irvine Ranch Water District and the Irvine Co., the San Joaquin Marsh Preserve at UC Irvine and the Rancho Mission Viejo Co. Gobernadora Ecological Restoration Area.

The panel will meet in public session starting at 8:30 today in the boardroom of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center, 100 Academy Drive, next to UC Irvine. The meeting will include talks on wetlands restoration in Southern California and in Portland, Ore.

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Good Vs. Bad Wetlands

Apanel of experts from the National Academy of Sciences toured Orange County wetlands Tuesday to study the effectiveness of artificially restoring and replacing the fragile ecosystems. What makes artificial wetlands fail or succeed:

Source: Mark Sudol, Environmental Solutions