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About Landscape Commission Artist RoseLynn Imbleau
PDF Brochure
My ECO ART is included in
“North Carolina Community Treasures”
For your copy click here
Marsh Wetlands Information
Overview
Commissioned Work
Andrew & Jake
Gallery Representation
contact
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ART THAT REPRESENTS OUR NATURAL RESOURCES, FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE SEA
“It is my intention that my artwork speaks to your heart like a close friend, a close friend that whispers remember this place.” – RoseLynn
Marsh Wetlands Information
OVERVIEW
The Marsh Wetlands: A Productive Day Care Center For Our Fishes
are more than aesthetics with their tall, form of smooth cord grass, called “spartina alterniflora,” also termed “sweetgrass” by locals, appear unflappable by the winds. They turn peach and deep purple in spring, grassy green in autumn and orange to golden yellow-ochre and sparkling, jewel-like in fall, and find placement in many artist’s paintings.
These renewable, self-sustaining, naturally occurring critical natural resources referred to as “wetlands” teem with life to serve humanity with a critical purpose as coastal ecosystems and are considered the economic life blood of coastal communities. Their pH is usually neutral which leads to an abundance of plant and animal life.
But the dynamics of these fragile environments stand to face perilous decline – this link between land and water that impacts our environment--that is regularly saturated by surface and ground water contributes billions of dollars annually to the global economies of: sport and commercial fishing, tourism, bird watching, sailing, and hunting. Wetlands are threatened not just from fossil fuel usage, but from oil spillage from offshore drilling platforms, incursion of sea level rise- from global warming- and our bottomless appetite for seafood, (that is threatened or over harvested), our recreational habits (that are not mind-full of the earth’s treasure), our waste control and our
clamor for over development: summed up-man’s combined actions.
A major ecosystem on earth, these marshy, swampy places literally “swim with life” and house a productive nursery for key species in the marine food chain on which shorebirds, larger fish and as we, humans rely. According to
National Geographic Traveler rising sea levels on the back side of the flat barrier islands of the Outer Banks, North Carolina, pose a risk to the productive salt marsh nurseries where shrimp, menhaden, shellfish and the tiny mud shrimp called “amphipods” for key species thrive. In the food web, life begins here at the marsh.
On the Outer Banks, to combat high water homeowners and developers install hard barriers which that disrupt tidal dynamics, damaging the marsh by keeping it from migrating inland and thus shrinking the food supply. Thousands of species of songbirds, frogs, fin fish, other birds, insects, amphibians and wildlife make their home in wetlands or are wetland dependent in some ways on salt marshes. Wetlands provide vital food to clams, crab and juvenile fish as well as habitat for waterfowl such as the Great Egret and Great Blue Heron. If the wetlands disappear from global warming, the insect-based food chains these species depend upon disappear and whole ecosystems are disrupted. Marshlands sustain a diversity of life way out of proportion with its size.
Marsh wetlands buffer stormy seas, slow shoreline erosion, and absorb excess nutrients before they reach oceans and estuaries (where salt water meets fresh water). When marsh functions and values are left “unchecked,” or when the environment is tampered with in a way collapsing the ability to enable water to move “slowly” thru a marsh- allowing sediment and other pollutants to settle to the substrate or floor of the marsh- the high levels of nutrients that usually remain are not absorbed and follow out to sea causing “dead zones” such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico.
The sloughs, creeks and swampy canals of a marsh are like human arteries, delivering life to every extremity. Wetlands ideally function to filter and cleanse drinking water by their filtering mechanisms to trap excess sediment and pollutants such as: fertilizers, pesticides, household chemicals, and are very important for preserving the quality of surface run-off with their sediment filtering capability. Wetland’s cleanse our nations’ drinking water and save communities millions every year that would otherwise be spent on drinking water treatment plants. Wetlands soak up and store floodwater by acting like a sponge and save communities from tragedy and great expense. With the tide, seawater washes over the marsh then back to the ocean and this action provides the sediment the wetlands depend upon to build upon itself and keep up with the rising sea levels. Wetlands harbor freshwater fish and shellfish, and support wildlife as rest stops and food sources for migrating birds. Fish populations die when robbed of the small creatures that are part of their diet.
Wetlands support a tremendous biodiversity of life beneficial for our life and the lives of our children. Environmental health and humanitarian health are one and the same and we should not lose sight of the planet and the natural resources we are leaving for our children.
The diet for our bodies and for the planet are similar and can be viewed as one and the same if we study “the affects of acid” and how it speeds up “aging” in our bodies and “slows the growth” of organisms in our oceans.
Just as we are learning a non-acidic diet is beneficial to humans from The pH Balance by Robert O. Young & Shelley Redford Young likewise, it is also critical to this abundance of aquatic and sea life we depend upon in the cycle of life sustaining life. Will there become a time when the oceans are dead? Will there always be an abundance of fish? These are questions science will share.
The effects of global warming and thus rising sea levels will increase the salinity of both ground water and surface water as reported by the EPA in its report on impacts to coastal zones:
http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/ImpactsCoastalZones.html. Coastal marshes and swamps are
vulnerable as they are within a few feet of sea level. Reportedly, nationwide a two foot rise could eliminate up to 43% of US wetlands. Port cities with low areas such as Boston, New York, Charleston, Miami are at risk, and with New Orleans 2 meters below sea level more than ½ the loss is incurring in Louisiana alone.
Higher estuarine salinity has also been noted by the EPA as a cause of declining oyster harvests in the Chesapeake and Delaware Bay and as a cause for wetland loss in Louisiana, Florida and Maryland ( see previous link).
Storm drains on our city streets flush car drippings, like oil, gas and brake dust along with a multitude of things straight into our oceans
every time it rains. Our fish that we eat do not have a filter system. This is one reason coastal marshes are so important in the role they serve as a filter for surface runoff. We’re in charge of earth-man. We must listen and look in the mirror with no more waiting for science to save us from complacency.
Individual Actions You Can Take Include:
1. Accept personal sacrifices and vote with your dollars to reduce global warming by looking at your, “personal ecological footprint”—your own lifestyle to make changes that you can, and while looking for something reasonable you can do: buy carbon offsets to cancel out your emissions. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, your personal emissions from your energy use and driving that you are directly responsible for account for only 40% of your total. The larger part comes from everything you buy and do.
2. Get on the map with your intentions at
NRDC.org, change begins with each individual.
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Sites to look at include:
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