[Type the company name] | Louisiana Wetlands | HORT Professionalism Spring 2012 | | Travis Gabourel | 5/7/2012 |

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The Louisiana's wetlands are a vital habitat for many types of plants and animals. They provide stopover grounds for millions of migratory birds and homes for many endangered species. The wetlands are an intergral part of our ecosystem, and the world’s ecosystem. There are 2 main types of wetlands in louisna these are swamped wetlands (forested) , and marsh wetlands. Although these areas make up a very small percentage of the land found in the USA, Southern Louisiana contains 40-45% of the wetlands found in the lower states. This is because Louisiana is the drainage gateway for the Gulf Of Mexico called the Lower Mississippi Regional Watershed . The Lower Mississippi Regional Watershed drains more than 24 million in seven states from southern Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico. This is why the wetlands of this area are important at a national scale.
Wetlands are extremely valuable to society. Wetlands can decrease flooding , remove pollutants from water , recharge groundwater, protect shorelines, provide habitat for wildlife , and serve important recreational and cultural functions. Taken as a whole, it is estimated that the aggregate value of services generated by wetlands throughout the world is $4.9 trillion per year. The swamps and marshes of coastal Louisiana help support the State’s more than $1 billion per year seafood industry. Economists estimate that one acre of wetlands provides about $10,000 worth of ecosystem services.
On the east side of Louisiana, coastal wetlands consist of long leaf pine savannas, that support many rare and unusual species such as pitcher plants and gopher tortoises. On the western side, they mainly consist of wet prairies, an ecosystem type that was once widespread, but now has almost been eliminated. The eastern coastline of Louisiana is much more susceptible to erosion than the western coastline due to the fact that much of the eastern coastline was created by deposits of silt from the Mississippi River. This process of sediment deposition has been blocked by the levee system that directs flood water past our wetlands. The western coastline is full of marsh, but the marshes only extend inland by about 30 miles, then the elevation begins to increase and the marshes fade into solid grounded prairies. Therefore, rising sea levels said to be caused by global warming and coastal erosion, will most likely not affect the western coastline as much as the eastern coastline, which may end up being replaced by open water in many areas.