Earth Science: Geology, the Environment, and the UniverseChapter 9: Surface WaterProblem of the WeekWetlands: Worthless or Worth Saving? Historically, wetlands have been seen as land with little or no monetary value. Over the years, they have been drained and filled in. Between the late 1700s and the mid-1980s, over half of the wetlands in the lower 48 states were lost primarily for agricultural purposes, and more recently for building and development projects. Times are changing, and we are beginning to realize that wetlands are economically valuable in many ways. For example, did you know that more than half of all U.S. adults (98 million people) hunt, fish, bird watch, or photograph wildlife? These activities, which rely on healthy wetlands, added an estimated $59.5 million to the national economy in 1991. As a second example, an estimated 71% of the $26.8 billion a year fishery processing and sales industry is derived from fish species that during their life cycles depend directly or indirectly on coastal wetlands. That’s no small change! Your text also describes wetlands as being important in flood control. And wetlands are vital in maintaining water quality by filtering out sediments and pollutants as water flows through them. It is not very difficult to assign a dollar value to the contributions of wetlands involving the recreation and fishing industries. However in other instances, it is difficult to put a dollar value on what "services" wetlands provide. Flood control is an example of a service provided by wetlands. Unlike the dollar value assigned by the fishing or recreation industries, it is difficult to put a dollar value on wetlands for preventing flood damage. It can be somewhat mind boggling to follow the many different methods of estimation used to determine the economic value of an acre of wetland, so we won’t go into all that. The following estimate, $9,600 per acre, per year, is based on estimates from 12 different studies (in 1996 dollar values). Problem:
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