Download Name: Date Period____ Wetland Loss in the Conterminous United

Name:
Date ____________________ Period____
Wetland Loss in the Conterminous United States
http://water.usgs.gov/nwsum/WSP2425/history.html
1.
At the time of European settlement in the 1600 how many acres of wetlands existed in the
conterminous United States?
2.
How many acres of wetland exist as of 1980 in the conterminous United States?
3.
What are the two main reasons wetlands are reclaimed? You will have to read most of the report
to find these answers.
4.
According to figure two, what percentage of wetlands has been destroyed in the Midwest?
5.
According to figure two, what percentage of wetlands has been destroyed in the Everglades?
6.
During the 1700’s what were wetlands regarded as?
7.
How were wetlands drained in the colonial days in the Carolina’s?
8.
Read over figure 3, using your knowledge of biodiversity list three ways that biodiversity would
be reduced with the draining of the wetlands.
9.
How would Phelps be affected by the loss of wetland in the area?
10. Describe some of the reasons and list the locations where wetlands where lost in the 1750’s and
1760’s
11. (List)Describe some of the technical advances that there was such a loss to wetlands form 1800 to
1860.
12. What happened to the Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin?
13. What was the Swamp Land Acts and what effect did it have on wetlands?
14. How did the civil war effect wetlands?
16. What affect did railroads have on wetlands?
17.By 1860
what type of factory located in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio manufactured what product and
how were these state affected? Include some numbers
18. From 1900 to 1950 what kind of changing technology took place and what effects did it have on
wetlands?
19. The Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act (1954) directly and indirectly affect what?
20. Estimates indicate that wetland losses in the conterminous United States from the mid-1970's to
the mid-1980's were?