Biodiversity of Wetlands and Impact of Environmental Contamination

Wetlands are vital water bodies, as crucial in a natural ecosystem as kidney in a human body. Apart from being highly productive as the habitat of birds, fishes and a variety of other aquatic life forms-micro-organisms. Wetlands provide other ecosystem services from maintaining the natural balance and for sustaining human livelihoods. Overall wetlands all over the country are exhibiting varying degrees of environmental degradation caused by encroachments, Eutrophication, siltation, urbanization and anthropogenic activities. There is also a misconception that wetlands are only wastelands. As a result, many precious wetlands have been converted to other uses all over in the world. Highly adaptable solutions must be found to permit development activities, including tourism,subsistence agriculture, and conservation of wildlife to be each given ‘a fair share' of the one biome–the wetland. This book provides an overview of the wetland study including flora, avifauna, management and restoration measures. It contains methodology of avifaunal survey, water quality analysis and WQI. It should be especially useful to those who are working in the field of wetland and environment conservation.