Despite wetlands being amongst the Earth's most productive ecosystems, they have been degraded and lost at an unprecedented rate globally, especially throughout the last century. In recognition of the importance of the crucial ecological functions and economic benefits they provide, international efforts, such as the Ramsar Convention, and European Union level efforts, such as the Water Framewo...

Methyl-parathion (MeP) was introduced into constructed wetlands for the purpose of assessing the importance of distance from the source of contamination and the role of emergent vegetation on the acute toxicity to Hyalella azteca (Crustacea: Amphipoda). A vegetated (90% cover: mainly Juncus effuses) and a nonvegetated wetland (each with a water body of 50 x 5.5 x 0.2 m) were each exposed to a s...

Harike wetland was declared a Ramsar site in 1990. It is located at the confluence of two major rivers of Indus rivers system, the Beas and the Sutlej, but was never explored extensively for its existing fish biodiversity. Earlier only 27 fish species of commercial value were reported from the wetland. Acknowledging its importance for rich diversity fish assemblages in seven different reaches o...

The toxicity and estrogenicity of a final treated municipal effluent was examined while flowing through a constructed wetland in north-central Texas, USA. Fish data were collected, and a baseline wetland characterization was performed to assess wetland treatment potential for these effluent properties. Vitellogenin (VTG), gonadosomatic index (GSI), hepatosomatic index (HSI), and secondary sexua...

Wetlands are among the most productive and economically valuable ecosystems in the world. However, because of human activities, over half of the wetland ecosystems existing in North America, Europe, Australia, and China in the early 20th century have been lost. Ecological restoration to recover critical ecosystem services has been widely attempted, but the degree of actual recovery of ecosystem...

It is estimated that 90% of sewage in cities in developing countries are today discharged untreated into water bodies. The physical, biological, chemical and geologic interactions among different components of the environment that occur within a wetland. Anzali wetland complex is a good example of a natural wetland, characteristic of the South Caspian lowlands. It supports an extremely diverse ...

Field surveys and sediment cores were used to estimate marsh erosion and land subsidence at Madison Bay, a well-known wetland loss hot spot in coastal Louisiana. Former marshes of Madison Bay are under about 1 m of water. Nearly two-thirds of the permanent flooding was caused by rapid subsidence in the late 1960s, whereas the other third was caused by subsequent erosion. Subsidence rates near M...

A combined constructed wetland formed by a facultative pond (FP), a surface flow wetland (SF) and a subsurface flow wetland (SSF) was studied from December 2004 until September 2005 in north-western Spain in order to evaluate their efficiency in the removal of pathogenic and indicator microorganisms and to determine their relationships. Microbial removal ranged from 78% for coliphages to over 9...

Geographically isolated wetlands, those entirely surrounded by uplands, provide numerous landscape-scale ecological functions, many of which are dependent on the degree to which they are hydrologically connected to nearby waters. There is a growing need for field-validated, landscape-scale approaches for classifying wetlands on the basis of their expected degree of hydrologic connectivity with ...