This book presents 12 effective methods to manage wetlands for conservation. It offers a tool box of causal factors that can be used to protect and restore wetlands to enhance biological diversity and other functions. Each causal factor is introduced, briefly explained, and then illuminated with selected examples from around the world.

The book provides a prioritized shopping list of methods for protecting and restoring wetlands. The three first and most important causal factors are flooding, fertility, and natural disturbance. Then nine other causal factors are introduced, including herbivory, sedimentation, roads, invasive species, and coarse woody debris. Each causal factor is carefully linked to the scientific literature and explained using the author’s own experience. The same list of 12 causal factors applies around the world—whether you are managing a temperate zone floodplain, a tropical peatland, a freshwater marsh, or a coastal mangrove swamp. Instead of hiring an expensive team of consultants, or pouring through hundreds of scientific papers, here is one concise guide to methods that can be immediately applied to benefit any wetland.

Professor Paul Keddy has spent more than 50 years studying wetlands, and writing and lecturing about the environmental factors that control them. He has published more than 150 scholarly papers, and won multiple scientific prizes. His book Wetland Ecology is widely used to teach the principles of wetland science. Causal Factors for Wetland Management: A Concise Guide has a much simpler message: how to protect and enhance wetlands. In this concise guide, he has condensed a lifetime of experience into just 12 principles.

The book is aimed at all people who protect or restore wetlands: park managers, wildlife biologists, landscape architects, engineers, environmental consultants, environmental agencies, conservation authorities, and NGOs—as well as landowners and concerned citizens. Causal Factors for Wetland Management: A Concise Guide is essential reading for anyone who cares for wetlands and wild places.