Biodiversity of aquatic macrophytes in wetlands based on proximate land use

Abstract

Biological diversity is a fundamentally important aspect of ecosystem functionality, and wetlands are known to harbor a large variety of species that are crucial to the overall ecosystem productivity and ecosystem services. Generally, anthropogenic alterations of land use have significantly impacted the biological diversity, and consequently the functionality, of sensitive aquatic ecosystems, especially wetlands. A close study of the literature led to the hypothesis that increased rates of residential and urban development would lead to decreased biological diversity of macrophytes in the coastal marshes of northern Michigan. Four coastal marshes in northern Michigan, including both the upper Lower Peninsula and lower Upper Peninsula, were selected for sampling to include a variety of surrounding land uses, consisting of two predominately urban marshes and two more protected marshes. Shannon Diversity Indices were calculated for both the individual species and broader functional groups present in each sub-habitat within each marsh and averaged for the overall diversity of each marsh. There were no significant trends correlating a majority of sub-habitats or overall marsh group and species diversity to increasing levels of urbanization, which broadly disproved the initial hypothesis. Future research is suggested on larger sample sizes and finer classifications of land use, as well as other abiotic and biotic factors, to more accurately determine and predict the effects of increasing development on wetland biodiversity and ecosystem functionality and services.