S7ílhen tl’a Swa7ám̓ (Food of the Ancestors)

T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss has dedicated most of her life to Indigenous plant remediation and restoration projects that support wetlands ecosystems, food forests and the wild inhabitants of these places. This is diligent and time based work. It will take several lifetimes to heal our planet, and everything we plant now will help to ensure that our future ancestors will survive. Through the work of planting and rebuilding these wetlands and food forests we are gifting the future a little of what was greatly taken from the natural world in the past 150 years. Through interdisciplinary documentation of this work, we assure that our future ancestors will continue to be connected to the natural world, by knowing the true names in our Indigenous languages, of these sacred plant relatives. These photos, along with the Sḵwx̱úmesh Snichem text, are part of the knowledge carrying that must be taken to the next generations to stay informed and connected. This is what reciprocity means to us. This is what Indigenous Food Sovereignty looks like.

Coastal Wetlands: Ecosystems Affected by Urbanization?

Coastal wetlands are ecosystems that provide multiple benefits to human settlements; nonetheless, they are seriously threatened due to both a lack of planning instruments and human activities associated mainly with urban growth. An understanding of their functioning and status is crucial for their protection and conservation. Two wetlands with different degrees of urbanization, Rocuant-Andalién (highly urbanized) and Tubul-Raqui (with little urbanization), were analyzed using temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, granulometry, fecal coliform, and macroinvertebrate assemblage variables in summer and winter. In both wetlands marked seasonality in salinity, temperature and sediment texture classification, regulated by oceanic influence and changes in the freshwater budget, was observed. In the Rocuant-Andalién wetland, the increases in pH, dissolved oxygen, gravel percentage, and coliform concentration were statistically significant. Urbanization generated negative impacts on macroinvertebrate assemblage structure that inhabit the wetlands; greater richness and abundance (8.5 times greater) were recorded in the Tubul-Raqui wetland than in the more urbanized wetland. The multivariate statistical analysis reflects the alteration of these complex systems.

Oxidation– Reduction Reactions

Soils become flooded occasionally by intense rainfall or by runoff, and a significant portion of soils globally underlies highly productive wetlands ecosystems that are inundated intermittently or permanently. Peat-producing wetlands (bogs and fens) account for about half the inundated soils, with swamps and rice fields each accounting for about one-sixth. Wetlands soils hold about one-third of the total nonfossil fuel organic C stored below the land surface, which is about the same amount of C as found in the atmosphere or in the terrestrial biosphere. This C storage is all the more impressive given that wetlands cover less than 6% of the global land area. On the other hand, wetlands ecosystems are also significant locales for greenhouse gas production. They constitute the largest single source of CH4 entering the atmosphere, emitting about one-third the global total, with half this amount plus more than half the global N2O emissions coming from just three rice-producing countries. A soil inundated by water cannot exchange O2 readily with the atmosphere. Therefore, consumption of O2 and the accumulation of CO2 ensue as a result of soil respiration. If sufficient humus metabolized readily by the soil microbiome (“labile humus”) is available, O2 disappearance after inundation is followed by a characteristic sequence of additional chemical transformations. This sequence is illustrated in Fig. 6.1 for two agricultural soils: a German Inceptisol under cereal cultivation and a Philippines Vertisol under paddy rice cultivation. In the German soil, which was always well aerated prior to its sudden inundation, NO3- is observed to disappear from the soil solution, after which soluble Mn(II) and Fe(II) begin to appear, whereas soluble SO42- is depleted (left side of Fig. 6.1). The appearance of the two soluble metals results from the dissolution of oxyhydroxide minerals (Section 2.4). Despite no previous history of inundation, CH4 accumulation in the soil occurs and increases rapidly after SO42- becomes undetectable and soluble Mn(II) and Fe(II) levels have become stabilized. During the incubation time of about 40 days, the pH value in the soil solution increased from 6.3 to 7.5, whereas acetic acid (Section 3.1) as well as H2 gas were produced.

Pyrosequencing-Based Assessment of Bacterial Community Structure in Wuliangsuhai Wetland

Microorganisms play important biochemical and geochemical roles in the environments they inhabit. To understand structure and function of wetlands ecosystems, it is essential to identify primary drivers of microbial diversity and community structure. In this study, soil bacteria communities were profiled in Wuliangsuhai Wetland, a natural wetland located in western Inner Mongolia, China. Soils were surveyed to characterize the structure and diversity of its microbial communities using barcoded pyrosequencing based on the 16S rDNA. The most abundant bacterial groups in all four soils were the Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria. The results of this study provide new information regarding a previously uncharacterized wetland ecosystem and show the value of highthroughput sequencing in the study of wetland ecosystems.