Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is a wetland?
A: Wetlands are areas that are either permanently or seasonally wet, and the soil and the plant community has adapted to that water. Many types of wetlands exist, each with a community of plants adapted to specific conditions that are determined by the hydrology (the source, quantity, and quality of the water supply), and the underlying soil chemistry.

Q: What are the different kinds of wetlands?
A: Some wetlands, such as fens or sedge meadows, may be fed by subsurface or surfacing groundwater. Others, such as a floodplain forest, are periodically flooded by overflowing rivers or streams. Still others, such as bogs or vernal pools, capture rainwater in depressions or basins on the land. Marshes are areas with plants that normally grow in relatively shallow water, while a swamp is much like a marsh that is forested. Click here to read more about different wetland types and plant communities.

Q: Why are wetlands valuable?  
A: Wetlands provide all of us with critical services.  They remove pollutants and toxic substances; reduce flood and storm damages; provide important habitat for wildlife, increasing biodiversity; recharge groundwater supplies; and provide valuable open space and recreational opportunities, such as fishing, hunting, and bird-watching. The value of wetlands is becoming ever more evident as they continue to be lost.

Q: Can you put a monetary value on wetlands? If so, how do you value them?
A: The short answer is yes; the practical answer is “it depends.”

When taking ecosystem goods and services into consideration, wetlands have been found to be among the most valuable ecosystems, second only to estuaries. A broad study found wetlands to be 75 percent more valuable than lakes and rivers, 15 times more valuable than forests, and 64 times more valuable than grasslands or rangelands.  An acre of wetland was found to be worth about $6,000 a year.

But valuing wetlands gets tricky when looking at services at a population level (e.g., the worth of migrating ducks as valued by duck hunters and bird-watchers) and ecosystem level (e.g., the value of flood prevention, nutrient removal). Most of the values provided by wetlands are public goods and are stored for perpetuity, which does not translate easily into a good private business model. There are also other difficulties such as the context of the wetland in a landscape, the human-ecosystem relationship, and the actual act of pricing an ecosystem, which is against some people’s personal values. Unless a market for some of the values develops (i.e., ecosystem service markets), it will remain hard to put a solid price on any ecosystem.

Q: Where are wetlands abundant?
A: Historically, wetlands had been abundant with the presence of water either on the surface or in the ground; therefore, areas in the close vicinity of lakes and rivers, or with shallow groundwater tables, were prone to have most of the wetlands. On a global scale, those are usually areas in river valleys and floodplains, lying just a few feet above sea level. As the Midwest used to receive steady spring and fall precipitation, wetland formation was also favored in low permeability soil, usually with high clay content. In fact, in pre-settlement, pre-drainage-ditch times, more than 60 percent of Illinois was a prairie-wetland landscape, where water spread over the ground surface with ease. Today, around 90 percent of Illinois' wetlands have been lost, mostly to agriculture and development.

The remaining wetlands in Illinois are present in the undeveloped areas around larger river systems such as the Illinois River, Kanakakee River, or the Des Plaines River, as well as along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Currently, around half of the Illinois wetlands are in the southern part of the state, and about 20 percent are in the northern third of the state. Central Illinois, on the other hand, has the most artificial/created wetlands in the whole state, increasing its overall wetland coverage. 

Q: Why do we differentiate among different types of wetlands/classify them?
A: Throughout the ages, humans have differentiated between various types of wetlands: there are marshes and moors, peatlands and playas--all named differently to express their unique characteristics and function in everyday life. With time, some of the definitions have been misused, and people looked for more stringent definitions for either scientific (in order to study the ecosystem) or management (pertaining to management techniques and keeping the law) reasons.

Wetlands have been classified differently depending on the purpose of their use. There have been definitions based on:

• Hydrological factors, such as source, duration, frequency and intensity of water available (i.e., a fen is a type of wetland fed by groundwater)
• Geomorphic settings based on depressional, riverine, fringe, or extensive peatlands settings (i.e., potholes are created in geographic depressions and fed by rainwater)
• Plant community makeup (i.e., sedge meadows)
• System and subsystem definitions based on the combination of geographic location and plant community (i.e., a wetland with cattails growing on a lakeshore is classified differently from a wetland also covered by cattails on a river edge)
• Legal requirements, such as whether a certain wetland is a jurisdictional wetland or not

Within those classifications, the first three types of systems are mostly used for scientific work, as they allow drawing stringent lines among different types of wetlands, yet allow for more flexibility within a system. The last two are used for management purposes, as they provide more straightforward guidelines for mapping, management techniques, and legal precautions and provide more homogeneity.

Q: If wetlands are so valuable, why don’t we have more of them?
A: Throughout the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, wetlands were regarded as a waste of land: they were good for nothing. In addition, settlers and even many people today have viewed them as a source of mosquitoes, unpleasant odors, and disease. Because abundant wildlife and fresh clean water were in such "limitless" supply, we were unaware of the important role played by wetlands in maintaining the systems on which our survival depends. Nor were we aware of the direct relationship between wetland loss and the intensity and frequency of floods. Consequently, about 80 to 90 percent of the region’s wetlands were drained, ditched, filled, or levied off to make room for what we once believed were "more important uses": agricultural, urban, industrial, and recreational development. We are only now beginning to understand the heavy price we pay for development in wetlands.

Q: How can the Wetlands Initiative “restore” wetlands?  
A: Before restoration begins, it is critical to develop an overall restoration strategy. This requires some detective work to determine the extent and nature of previous wetlands at the site. This may include a historical investigation of previous land use and hydrologic modifications, a mapping of the extent of hydric (wetland) soils, and a survey for the presence of remnant wetland-adapted plants.

From the emerging picture of what once existed, the restoration ecologist must decide if or to what extent the previous wetland can be restored. Finally, a plan must be put together for restoring both the hydrology (returning water to the landscape) and reintroducing the wetland plant community. If both of these goals can be met, many elements of the wetland animal community will find their way back all on their own ("if you build it, they will come!").

Restoring hydrology is the process of returning water back to the landscape. Groundwater may have been drained or surface water diverted. For example, most Midwestern farmers installed drain tiles and/or ditches in their fields to carry groundwater or rainwater off the site so that they could grow crops. By disabling or removing these tiles and filling the ditches (see photo at right), water will once again percolate into the ground to recharge pools, ponds, and streams. In other areas, levees or dams might have kept water from reaching a site. By removing a dam or “notching” a levee, water can once again flow.

This can be a relatively easy process, but it also might require altering the topography with heavy equipment. At times, it may not be possible to completely restore the previous hydrologic conditions because the source of water has been cut off somewhere offsite, or because a full restoration might threaten downstream resources. But once water has been successfully returned, soils will begin to form the "hydric" characteristics that support wetland-adapted plants, which in turn support the many animal species that depend upon them.

Restoring a wetland plant community generally means two things: restore native wetland plants, and eliminate or manage invasive species. Each of these two components is part art and part science-– their success depends upon close monitoring and quick response, especially in the initial stages of the restoration. Where wetland soils have remained relatively undisturbed, a wetland plant "seed bank" may simply await water’s return to stimulate germination and reestablishment. However, these opportunities are rare, and many species may have to be restored from seeding or the installation of pre-germinated plugs. A combination of natural return, seeding, and "plugging" is usually the most effective means of restoring a diverse native community.

Managing invasives should begin before hydrologic restoration where wetland-tolerant weeds are present. Otherwise, a rapid response to invasive outbreaks is important in order to prevent their spread. Invasives are species that colonize and spread quickly, preventing the slower-growing natives from establishing across the landscape. However, as the native wetland community matures, less and less invasive management will be required as the available real estate needed by invasives is colonized by natives.

At the Wetlands Initiative's Hennepin & Hopper Lakes Restoration Project, we planted about 160,000 plants and 5,000 pounds of native seed across 1,250 acres of wetland and prairie landscape. The plants and seed included more than 300 different species. The Initiative's projects at the U.S. Forest Service's Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie have also involved planting more than 100 plant species in the form of plugs and seeding nearly 200 other species. The Initiative is currently working to connect all the unique restoration projects at Midewin into a comprehensive landscape with a patchwork of rare habitats such as dolomitic wetland and prairie and deep soil prairie, marsh, sedge meadow, and many others.

These efforts were designed to produce landscapes rich in species, in an attempt to approach the level of biodiversity that once was common to these diverse habitats. Ongoing invasive management is now an important part of our wetland restoration strategy.

Q: Why is a wetland organization working to restore the prairie at Midewin?
A: The Wetlands Initiative, obviously, is focused on wetlands. But when you're serious about restoring wetlands, you have to recognize wetlands don’t exist in isolation. Wetlands are integrated into a broader landscape, and in Illinois, that landscape was primarily prairie, forest, and savanna.

That’s why, since 1997, the Wetlands Initiative has been a partner with the U.S. Forest Service to restore the “prairie” at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, the largest protected natural area in northeastern Illinois. In reality, this 19,000-acre site will host many more natural communities than just what we call prairie. In fact, at the Grant Creek Restoration Area we’re working in now, the Initiative's senior ecologist estimates that 85 percent of the landscape was previously wetland habitat, including marsh, wet meadow, and sedge meadow. (The latter two are wetland communities that don’t always have standing water, but at least have saturated soils throughout the year.)

The footprint of those wetlands is on the landscape today, even though these areas no longer have water because they’ve been farmed, ditched, drained, tiled, or broken up with roads, berms, and railroad tracks. We can see a wetland footprint in the hydric soils still on the landscape.

Our goal is to restore wetlands to function as a whole ecosystem within the broader landscape, to provide high-quality habitat, clean water, and other benefits.

Q: Are there laws protecting wetlands?
A: Yes and no. For over a 150 years, people and laws have actively worked to drain and destroy wetlands. However, since the 1970s, there has been significant movement to protect and restore wetlands, and many different laws, statutes, policies, and technical guidance have been released. Most significant is the federal Clean Water Act, which protects wetlands that are considered "Waters of the United States" -- a legal term that does not include all wetlands. There is no comprehensive wetland-specifc law that covers all wetlands, and no single agency to execute the laws that we do have. This results in managing wetlands under regulations that pertain to land use and water quality, sometimes with completely different goals. In addition, U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the past decade have left confusion and ambiguity as to which wetlands are protected. For information about whether wetlands near you are protected, contact your city, county, or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (regulatory division) for more information. The National Wetlands Newsletter follows the legal issues regarding wetlands.

Q: How will climate change affect wetlands?
A: Climate change models vary in the intensity of their predictions, but the trend shows that the Midwest will experience higher temperatures and larger amounts of precipitation delivered in fewer events. As a result, some wetlands will be inundated and then dry out earlier in the season.

Increased periods of drought would have a number of repercussions on wetland habitats. First, plant communities adapted to a certain hydrology might vanish, as they will no longer find conditions that allow them to thrive and be competitive with other species. With their absence, there may be a decline of wildlife that directly and indirectly depends on that plant population.

Another problem that scientists are worried about is the release of carbon as carbon dioxide (CO₂), a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Wetlands hold a large amount of carbon in the soil, either as organic matter, or as peat. As certain areas dry up as a result of climate change, the inundated soils will be exposed to oxygen, allowing microbes to start digesting the organic matter and releasing stored CO₂. This process could start a positive feedback loop--as more CO₂ is released, the effects of climate change will increase, possibly drying more wetlands.

One thing is certain: As we will experience more intense rainfall, wetlands will become increasingly important in acting as buffers and storing floodwater. Restoring wetlands not only positively impacts the global community, but has an immediate effect on our own communities.

Q: What is the Initiative doing to anticipate climate change on its restoration sites?
A: The Wetlands Initiative has put a lot of effort, time, and resources into its restoration projects. We have confidence that both the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge at Hennepin & Hopper Lakes and the Initiative's projects at the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie will stand the test of time and play a vital role in helping wildlife adapt to changing conditions. Climate change predictions for the Midwest show higher temperatures and less frequent but more intense rain events. In order to adapt to these changes, the Initiative has been purchasing seed and plugs from the more southern areas of the seed provenance where possible. These plants have developed under warmer temperatures, resembling the conditions anticipated in the future for Illinois.

In addition, we are planting native species that will provide appropriate wildlife habitat, which will be crucial as species begin to migrate further north due to changing climate and lack of habitat. Finally, in all our projects, the Initiative focuses on landscape-level restorations, re-establishing a mosaic of natural habitats from wet marsh to dry prairie. Restoring a large natural landscape, as well as a gradient of habitats from wet to dry, will provide a buffer for plants and wildlife. This buffering helps native species to be better protected from disturbance and to be more resilient to the effects of climate change.

Q: Can I visit your site?
A: The Dixon Waterfowl Refuge near Hennepin, Illinois, is open to the public year-round. Click here for more information.

Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie has trails for hiking, biking and horseback riding (click here for a map and directions). However not all of the trails lead through areas that have already been restored. The Grass Frog Trail leads through the South Patrol Road Restoration Project--a project the Wetlands Initiative has been involved in from the beginning. Midewin Forest Service staff is currently working on trail connection that would lead through the Initiative's current Grant Creek Restoration Project and into other Initiative projects, such as the Blodgett Road and Lower Drummond restorations.

Q: What can I do to help preserve wetlands?
A: If you live near a wetland, you live near an important natural resource. You have the opportunity—indeed, the responsibility—to be a steward of that resource. Start by being a good neighbor to the wetland. Practice environmentally-sensitive activities to decrease the amount of nutrients, pollutants, and sediment that enter the wetland. Click here to download the Initiative's free 24-page booklet, Living with Wetlands: A Handbook for Homeowners in Northeastern Illinois.

If you don’t live near a wetland, you can still help by advocating for state and county laws that protect wetlands, supporting efforts by your local government to purchase open land, and using sound environmental practices in your home (e.g., don’t dump toxins and chemicals in your storm sewer or over-fertilize your lawn).

Q: Does the Wetlands Initiative need volunteers?
A: We host biannual volunteer work days at the Dixon Waterfowl Refuge to pull invasive species or gather native seed. If you are interested in participating in any of these, please watch our News and Events page for details or sign up for our enewsletter. You can also contact us here to let us know of your interest and inquire about the latest opportunities.

The U.S. Forest Service and the Nature Conservancy host monthly volunteer and educational activities at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. Click here to find volunteer opportunities on the Midewin website.