Let’s face it: we rely pretty heavily on the Mississippi River. It’s a pathway for all kinds of beings, big and small, to get where they’re going. The River’s a flyway for birds and we’ve turned it into a waterway for barges. We’ve also turned the Mississippi into a conduit for climate change.
In order to tame wild Ol’ Man River, we’ve had to trim up some of his roots. That is, in order to build levees and expand large-scale industrial farms, we’ve had to drain the wetlands in places where we wanted to build levees. While the act of draining wetlands by itself does not significantly add to the net amount of greenhouse gasses captured within our atmosphere, the resulting lack of wetlands is a serious problem.
New research indicates that the amount of carbon we humans are putting into the atmosphere is almost double the amount that can be measured there. So what is happening to all of that carbon? As we learned in grade school, plants breathe just like you and me. And wetlands are chock-full of plant life. The life that together makes a wetland ecosystem also absorbs both carbon dioxide and methane, two notorious greenhouse gasses. Without wetlands in place, there are, metaphorically speaking, fewer lungs to take in the carbon.
Additionally, northern wetlands (as far north as the Arctic, but for our purposes, Minnesota) contain peat. Manufacturers sell peat as a fertilizer, which makes a lot of sense. This partially-decayed vegetable matter is rich with nutrients. It is also full of methane gas. As wetlands are drained, peat dries out and releases methane into the atmosphere.
Between farming, levee-building and peat-harvesting, wetlands are disappearing fast. What could one human possibly do? Simple. Keep checking back with 1 Mississippi about the 2012 Farm Bill and opportunities to talk to your congressperson about protecting wetlands. In the meantime, start the New Year off right by supporting local farms. Together, our work to protect our families, our homes and our River shows that we are one nation and 1 Mississippi.