Flipping Wetlands

No, it's not the newest television series on the Discovery Home Channel! It's a term being created, as we speak, referencing the idea of paying agricultural producers to turn farm land into wetlands and then, once the wetlands are rich with nutrients, flipping them back to farmland.

This idea differs from many of the traditional environmental incentive programs during the final stage. Most projects that RCS has been involved in, like the Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project and the Northern Everglades – Payment for Environmental Services, are funded by state agencies to promote retaining stormwater on farm or ranchland in an effort to reduce the amount of nutrients that flow off agricultural properties during heavy rains and then using this stored stormwater to help meet certain demands for fresh water, such as irrigation and flushing barns and milking parlors. However, once these projects are designed and constructed, they are usually there to stay.

The new concept of ‘flipping wetlands’ concentrates more on creating land that is nutrient rich through natural means and, therefore, decreasing the need to apply the fertilizer that contributes to nutrient run off during storms. Using this strategy, farmers and ranchers would convert fields that have become low in nutrients due agricultural use into wetlands. Over a period of time, the natural processes that take place in wetlands would, once again, create soil that is rich in nutrients. Once this has occurred, the farmers and ranchers would be free to return these areas to part of a functioning agricultural operation.

How long the process would take to create a viable amount of nutrients in the soil is still being determined – as well as if there would be need for supplemental nutrients to be applied – but initial findings are promising. You can read about the research being conducted at the Florida Gulf Coast University's Wetland Research Park in our source article here.