Oil and Gas Industry Impact on Arctic Wetlands, Mitigation, Recovery and Restoration Options
Oil and gas industry impact on Arctic wetlands, mitigation, recovery and restoration options FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY Final report of the project : «Shell Wetland International Partnership Study of Oil and Gas industry impact mitigation on Arctic Wetlands, wetands recovery and restoration» under the collaborative partnership between Shell and Wetlands International Project No:4600005499; Signed by Shell: 11/06/09; Signed by WI: 26/05/09 Wetlands International Ede 2011 Oil and gas industry impacts on Arctic wetlands: mitigation, recovery & restoration 2.3. Arctic wetlands and natural processes (Olivia Bragg, Vladimir Batuyev, Peter Kershaw, Alexander Kondratiev, Olga & Igor Lavrinenko, Tatiana Minayeva, Sergey Novikov, Marieke Oosterwoud, Saake van der Schaaf, Andrey Sirin, Ludmila Usova, Hok Woo, Kathy Young) 2.3.1. Arctic wetlands: classifying diversity Wetlands, as defined by the Ramsar Convention1, are widely represented in the Arctic (Fig. 2.2). The purpose of this review is to explain in the simplest possible way that different Arctic wetland types have different features and function in different ways. As a result, they provide different ecosystem services, they have different levels of sensitivity to disturbance, and different capacities for restoration. They are also subject to different legislation and decision-making mechanisms at national and international levels. The diversity of natural ecosystems is usually described in terms of a classification of some sort. Whatever classification principles are used, it seems that biodiversity scientists are never able to describe or predict all natural diversity in this way. Therefore, the common practice is to develop different classification schemes for different purposes. In this review, we use a very simple classification of wetlands to underpin the tasks of impact assessment and planning of mitigation and rehabilitation activities.
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