ABSTRACT
Wetlands occupy a relatively small portion of the earth’s land surface, with estimates of their global extent ranging from 5% to 8%, or between 5.3 and 12.8 million km2. Approximately half of that area has been lost and much of the area that remains is degraded due to human activities (Mitsch and Gosselink 2007). Wetlands provide a suite of ecological functions, generally classified as hydrologic, biogeochemical, or habitat support functions. When these are valued by society, they are generally referred to as ecosystem services and include flood water storage, carbon (C) sequestration, water quality improvements, and habitat provisioning. The realization that wetland ecosystem services are critical for human health and well-being (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005) has illustrated the need for assessment protocols that can provide estimates of the level of service provided, detect the impact of human activities on their ecological condition, and guide us in restoration efforts (Zedler 2003). In this chapter, we review some of the key approaches that have been developed to employ soil characteristics in the assessment of both the ecological condition and the functional capacity of wetlands.
