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xxi The significance of tidal wetlands as coastal landscapes, their vital contribution to estuarine productivity, and their utilization by fish and wildlife of recreational and commercial importance were largely responsible for generating interest in their conservation. After witnessing a decade or more of accelerating wetland destruction and degradation after World War II, many state governments passed special laws during the 1960s through the 1980s to protect these wetlands in the United States. These laws have worked well to save the remaining tidal wetlands from destruction by human actions. The federal government also began to put more emphasis on minimizing the environmental impact of proposed construction in these wetlands and associated waters. More recently, attention has focused on restoring tidal flow to wetlands with restricted connections to the sea and to former estuarine wetlands separated from the estuary. With worldwide recognition of climate change and global warming, significant concern now exists over the future of tidal wetlands given predicted sea level rise, armoring of shorelines, and continued development in the coastal zone. Several books have been written about coastal wetlands including the best seller Life and Death of the Salt Marsh by John Teal and Mildred Teal (1969) and technical references such as Salt Marshes and Salt Deserts of the World (Chapman 1960), Wet Coastal Ecosystems (­ Chapman 1977), The Ecology of a Salt Marsh (Pomeroy and Wiegert 1981), Conservation of Tidal Marshes (Daiber 1986), Coastal Marshes: Ecology and Wildlife Management (­Chabreck 1988), Saltmarsh Ecology (Adam 1990), Ecology of Tidal Freshwater Forested Wetlands of the Southeastern United States (Conner et al. 2007), Coastal Wetlands: An Integrated Ecosystem Approach (Perillo et al. 2009), Tidal Freshwater Wetlands ( ­ Barendregt et al. 2009), and Tidal Marsh Restoration: A Synthesis of Science and Management (Roman and Burdick 2012). Scientific community profiles on specific types of tidal wetlands have been published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (e.g., Nixon 1982; Whitlatch 1982; Seliskar and Gallagher 1983; Odum et al. 1984; Teal 1986; and Wiegert and Freeman 1990). The 1969 Teal book did a superb job at educating average citizens and students of ecology on the value and plight of salt marshes. Since then, there has been great improvement in the status of and advances in our knowledge of salt marshes and other wetlands. A book covering the full range of tidal wetland types, summarizing much of what we’ve learned, and describing current protection and management would complement both the Teal book and the more technical publications. Previously I have written two comprehensive field guides for identifying plants representative of tidal wetlands: one for the northeastern United States (Tiner 1987) Purpose and Organization of the Book xxii   Purpose and Organization of the Book and another for the southeastern United States (Tiner 1993a). Each book contained a brief introduction to coastal wetland ecology . In expanding the former field guide to include plants of northern tidal wetlands in neighboring Canada and plants of tidal freshwater wetlands for a 2009 revision, I saw the need to include more background on coastal wetlands. I had recently written a very successful popular book on wetlands of the Northeast—In Search of Swampland: A Wetland Sourcebook and Field Guide—that included a wetland primer as the first part of the book (Tiner 2005). In updating A Field Guide to Coastal Wetland Plants of the Northeastern United States, I thought readers would benefit from a primer on tidal wetland ecology. As I worked on expanding this section, however, I found that the new material was worthy of a separate volume, especially since there was not a single reference that covered the ecology of tidal wetlands of the northeastern United States and adjacent Canada, or the natural history of tidal wetlands and recent efforts to restore these valuable habitats. This twovolume approach would also allow the field guide to focus on plant identification and not be encumbered by the bulk of material included in a primer. This book is a primer to tidal wetlands using examples mostly from the eastern United States and Canada but also referencing similar wetlands from the Pacific Coast of North America. It provides a fairly broad but not exhaustive treatment of coastal wetlands, their formation, ecology, distribution, status, trends, protection, and restoration. The emphasis is on vegetated tidal wetlands, mainly marshes and swamps. Some topics are discussed only briefly (e.g., sea grasses, mangroves, beaches, tidal flats, rocky shores, tidal animals, and physiological adaptations of plants to the rigors of the tidal environment); nonetheless, readers should come away...

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