Wetland Evaluation on Biological Component

3 . Biological and Ecological Component

The Ontario Wetland Evaluation System (OWES ) studies four components of a wetland to arrive at a score . These four components are the Biological , Social , Hydrological and Special Features . In this section we shall evaluate the Biological and Ecological Component of the Bechtel Park Wetland Community

According to the OWES , the Biological and Ecological component is further divided into three major sections : Productivity , Biodiversity and Size . Productivity focuses on the growing degree-days per soil wetland type and the physiographic soil type . The Biodiversity section talks about

number of wetlands , vegetation communities , diversity of surrounding habitat , proximity to other wetlands , interspersion and open water types . We shall now evaluate each one of these sections in details to arrive at the of the Bechtel Park Wetland

3 .1 Productivity

Biological Productivity is the ability of an area to produce biomass as measured by the production of living organisms . When this biomass is produced by plants , the productivity is said to be primary . When it is produced by herbivores , the productivity is secondary and when it is produced by carnivores , the productivity is said to be tertiary Evaluation of the secondary and tertiary productivity is usually complex and time-consuming . Besides , the primary productivity is a good indicator of the overall biological productivity . Hence only the primary productivity is considered for evaluation in the biological component .3 .1 .1 Growing degree-days per soil (GDD /soil

The growing degree-days per soil estimate the...