Ecological controls on wetland sediment records: late quaternary to present

湿地是环境变化的重要沉积陆地档案，由于对湿地生态系统的不完全理解，湿地的研究经历了衰退和复苏的阶段。这一点在加拿大最为明显，因为加拿大的湿地比其他任何国家都多，欧洲和俄罗斯以外的其他地区的湿地沉积档案信息也最多。虽然大多数研究往往集中在检测湖泊和湿地沉积记录中的气候信号，但我们希望了解湿地生态如何影响气候变化。（即物理、水文、地球化学和生物）控制着各种环境梯度、生态系统类型、以及在空间尺度上（微站点到区域流域）和时间尺度（从现在到第四纪晚期的长期变化），因为记录中保存的信号既可以是生态的，也可以是气候的。 我们的研究重点是了解导致湿地今天和未来的速率，驱动因素和发展途径。我们已经选择了专门的生态湿地，如壶孔和富含金属的“含铜”湿地，使生态信号可能会清楚地区分从沉积物记录的气候信号。 此外，湿地将在西北安大略，一个已知的地区经历了重大的气候变化，在全新世，以比较沉积物/泥炭记录的生态和气候信号进行研究。 我们研究了一系列的物理（即。体积密度、分解、灰分含量、木炭）、生物（即，花粉和植物宏体化石，原生动物），和地球化学（碳，氮，同位素）代用指标的沉积物记录。湿地生态系统为人类健康，社会，生计和经济提供了许多好处，因此在本研究计划中收集的信息将为湿地管理者，政府监管机构和政策制定者，保护主义者，私营部门和经济学家提供感兴趣的信息。 当前关注的相关环境问题包括全球变暖、防洪、景观恢复和湿地生态技术。

Wetlands represent important sedimentary terrestrial archives of environmental change that have undergone phases of decline and resurgence in research because of an incomplete understanding of the wetland ecosystem. This is most apparent in Canada which contains more wetland than any other country, and other regions outside Europe and Russia where most of the information on wetland sedimentary archives exists. While most of research has tended to focus on detecting climate signals in lake and wetland sedimentary records, we want to understand how the ecology of wetlands (i.e. physical, hydrological, geochemical and biotic) controls the sediment record across a variety of environmental gradients, ecosystem types, and biotic communities that range in spatial scale (microsite to regional watersheds) and temporal scales (present-day to long-term changes during the late Quaternary) because signals preserved in the record can be both ecological and climatic.  Our research focuses on understanding what the rates, drivers, and developmental pathways are that lead to wetlands being what they are today and will be in the future. We have selected wetlands with specialized ecology such as kettle holes and metal-rich "cupriferous" wetlands so that ecological signals might clearly differentiated from climatic signals in the sediment record.  Also, wetlands will be studied in NW Ontario, a region known to have experienced major climate shifts in the Holocene in order to compare ecological and climate signals in the sediment/peat records.   We study a range of physical (ie. bulk density, decomposition, ash content, charcoal), biotic (ie. pollen and plant macrofossils, Protozoa), and geochemical (C, N, isotopes) proxy indicators in the sediment record. Wetland ecosystems provide numerous benefits to human health, society, livelihoods, and economy and as such information collected during this research program will provide information of interest to wetland managers, government regulators and policy makers, conservationists, the private sector, and economists.  Current relevant environmental issues of interest include global warming, flood protection, landscape restoration, and wetland ecotechnology.