NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/1008599
NEBRASKAland Magazine • Nebraska's Saline Wetlands increased, which had a direct effect on its tributaries that began to headcut and form faster and deeper channels themselves. Soon, groundwater tables were dropping, and periodic flooding that used to spread across the floodplain and infuse the groundwater connected with these wetlands could no longer be recharged. Other wetlands were being ditched, drained and filled for agriculture, and surrounding prairie grasslands were also being lost to the plow. As topsoil ran off fields and entered waterways, saline soils were buried in sediment, and as banks began to slough off in incised channels, they began to cover up the seeps and springs that fed the streams. Later, other wetlands were filled in or used as landfill sites, or paved over for roads and parking lots, and housing and commercial developments grew north. In short, as the city grew the wetlands suffered, and after a century of growth and development, only a small percentage of the original 20,000 or so acres of saline wetlands remained, mostly surviving in small fragments less than 20 acres in size, and highly degraded. Wetlands are among the most productive and biologically diverse habitats on earth. They are the kidneys of the landscape, filtering our water of pollutants and converting them to less harmful substances. They control flooding by giving water a place to go and slowing down runoff and allowing water to absorb back into the soil. They recharge local water tables and aquifers. Sadly, they have been viewed more as a nuisance or an impediment to progress in our country's brief history, and roughly half of all wetlands in the U.S. have been destroyed. It wasn't until the early 1980s that concerted conservation efforts began to officially protect eastern Nebraska's remaining saline wetlands when the Lower Platte South NRD began purchasing easements, and when lands that became Arbor Lake and the Jack Sinn Wildlife Management Area were acquired by the City of Lincoln and the Nebraska Game and The fleshy pink leaves of sea blite explode like confetti on a salt pan at Arbor Lake. A male black damselfly, or ebony jewelwing (Calopteryx maculata), flares its wings in courtship display from a perch along a tributary of Rock Creek. Damselflies, dragonflies and a myriad of other insect species make their lives in saline wetland landscapes.