Category FAQs Search : Ecosystem
Question: Challenges for Coastal Wetlands
Answer: Human activities have significantly altered coastal and marine habitat over time. This degradation and loss of habitat has significant economic and social consequences. For example, habitat degradation and loss has reduced the size and diversity of fish populations, which in turn decreases opportunities for commercial and recreational fisheries. Human population continues to concentrate near the coasts, increasing the pressures on coastal and marine habitat.
According to a 2009 study, the coastal watersheds of the lower 48 states lose 80,000 acres of coastal wetlands each year to development, drainage, erosion, subsidence and sea-level rise. That’s approximately seven football fields every hour, and a 25 percent increase over the previous 6-year study period.
In the upper parts of coastal watersheds, stressors associated with development—both residential and infrastructure—were key factors in wetland loss. This wetlands loss threatens our nation’s sustainable fisheries, rare and protected species, plus our supply of clean water, and the stability of shorelines in the face of storms, floods and tides.
As almost half of the U.S. population lives in coastal counties, continued loss of coastal wetlands means less protection for those communities from strong storms, such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Some of the most dramatic coastal wetland loss is occurring in Louisiana. In the lifetime of a child born today, approximately 800,000 acres of Louisiana wetlands will disappear, pushing the coastline inland as much as 33 miles in some areas. Sea-level rise is a challenge for coastal wetlands everywhere. Using a conservative forecast of 1.5-foot sea-level rise, even more wetlands—an area equal in size to Pennsylvania—could be lost.
(Source: NOAA Fisheries, 27 Jan 2021)
Source Link: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/habitat-conservation/coastal-wetlands-too-valuable-lose