How a new mini-wetland is creating a natural filter for a P.E.I. farm field | 24CA News
A watershed group in japanese P.E.I. is experimenting with a brand new mini-wetland that may filter pollution, fertilizer and pesticides from water trickling out of the neighbouring farm discipline.
The new vegetated ditch may even take in carbon and create wildlife habitat.
The Souris and Area Branch of the P.E.I. Wildlife Federation is likely one of the companions within the undertaking.
“It’s going to be an elongated ditch, wider than a normal drainage ditch would be,” mentioned undertaking supervisor Jake MacKinnon.
“The idea is that it’ll hold water, and encourage it to stagnate, and any of the nutrients contained in the water will help feed what should turn into, hopefully, a blossoming wetland site.
“It ought to assist to filter any form of runoff coming off the agricultural discipline close by, in addition to creating lots of habitat for birds and vertebrates, and amphibians.”
Easier to build
The Souris watershed group has worked with local farmers to add other wetlands as part of the Living Labs project.
But MacKinnon says the mini-wetland is a new concept.
“These websites have been designed as a extra low-impact model of a full-size constructed wetland,” MacKinnon said.
“The thought is that it takes up so much much less footprint within the discipline, so it is a lot simpler to implement. You might have a lot of wider-spread smaller websites in comparison with one or two bigger ones.
It took the watershed group a number of days to construct the brand new mini-wetland.
“The biggest factors for us in this site were a low grade, which meant we wouldn’t catch too much runoff. Because this is an experimental site, we want to have a fairly controlled input,” MacKinnon mentioned.
“We also wanted to have it near a watercourse just to make sure that — assuming it works — it will have a beneficial impact on the local ecosystem as well.”
MacKinnon mentioned the researchers will take samples alongside the brand new mini-wetland each two weeks and take a look at them for nitrogen ranges.
He mentioned the sphere subsequent to the mini-wetland could have potatoes planted in it subsequent season, “which is where we tend to see the greatest volume of nitrates. That should give us a pretty good sample year to see very quickly what kind of impact this ditch is going to make.”
Wetlands are one of many strongest carbon sinks that we’ve out there to us.—Jake MacKinnon, Souris and Area Branch of the P.E.I. Wildlife Federation
MacKinnon mentioned lowering greenhouse gasoline emissions, by storing carbon within the mini-wetland, is one other purpose of the pilot.
“Actually, sequestering carbon is one of the main goals with this project,” he mentioned. “Wetlands are one of the strongest carbon sinks that we have available to us.”
Climate change
A analysis scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada mentioned the thought for the undertaking comes from the United States, the place they’re widening current ditches and planting vegetation to decelerate the move of the water to cut back pollution.
Audrey Murray mentioned P.E.I. does not have the identical sorts of ditches, so they’re constructing wetlands on the facet of farm properties as a substitute.
“Wetlands are almost the perfect natural water treatment device,” Murray mentioned.
“Our hope is that we’ll be able to basically increase the percentage of wetland in agricultural ecosystems, [and[take some of the agricultural land back for wetland.”
Murray mentioned the brand new mini-wetlands may even guard in opposition to potential threats from altering climate patterns.
“One of the biggest challenges, especially for P.E.I., that we’re going to face with climate change is going to be extreme rainfall,” she mentioned.
“So in those extreme rainfall events, instead of all of the water reaching the waterway, the river, the water that’s being held in the wetland will reach the river later. So the big storm surge in the river will be levelled off, and prevent flooding of that river.”
