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In this study, we evaluate ecological and cultural resiliency in response to desertification of the Mesopotamian Marshes of Southern Iraq. Our research illustrates that the desiccation of the marshes has caused a drastic change in how Marsh Arab women interact with their environment; specifically, in comparison to the predesiccation period, women's roles are increasingly limited to domestic rather than marsh-dependent activities. With the exception of raising water buffalo and limited horticulture activities, most families today have little opportunity to utilize women's ability to generate income by applying their traditional ecological knowledge and skills. Furthermore, these women are no longer transmitting their marsh-specific knowledge and skills to the next generation, and these valuable and ancient cultural memories are being lost. Upstream dam construction, drought, and regional climate change is depriving Marsh Arab communities of marsh ecosystem services such as potable water, water buffalo forage, fish yields, and reed production. In marsh areas, where enough water remains to sustain ecosystem services (such as in Chibayish and the Iraq Marshlands National Park), cultural knowledge has been retained and passed on to the next generations. We recommend that programs be implemented to preserve these traditional skills, to develop a market for handicrafts to support women and their families, and to support cultural knowledge. Otherwise, with the passing of the older generation, these remnants of ancient Sumerian knowledge systems and traditional ways of life will soon be forgotten.

In Iraq, where many biblical scholars place the Garden of Eden, Scott Pelley finds a water world where the Marsh Arabs are making a comeback after Saddam nearly destroyed the cradle of civilization. Scott Pelley reports.

If Eco Architecture is a matter of designing with nature then the Sumerian mudhif is a paradigmatic example. It was first built in the marshes of what is now southern Iraq, over 5000 years ago, and constructed entirely of reeds, to form huge parabolic arches over which reed mats were tied to form walls, curving over into roofs whilst the flat end walls had reed lattice panels for the admission of daylight and air. The mudhif was built and used, by the Marsh Arabs of the region, until 1993 when Saddam Hussein began to drain and dam the marshes, in an attempt to destroy the life and culture of those Arabs. But after his defeat in 2003, the Arabs dug up his dykes, canals and damns, re-flooded the marshes and began to resume their ancient way of life.

Coastal ecosystems produce and sequester significant amounts of carbon (\"blue carbon\"), which has been well documented in humid and semi-humid regions of temperate and tropical climates but less so in arid regions where mangroves, marshes, and seagrasses exist near the limit of their tolerance for extreme temperature and salinity. To better understand these unique systems, we measured whole-ecosystem carbon stocks in 58 sites across the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in natural and planted mangroves, salt marshes, seagrass beds, microbial mats, and coastal sabkha (inter- and supratidal unvegetated salt flats). Natural mangroves held significantly more carbon in above- and belowground biomass than other vegetated ecosystems. Planted mangrove carbon stocks increased with age, but there were large differences for sites of similar age. Soil carbon varied widely across sites (2–367 Mg C/ha), with ecosystem averages that ranged from 49 to 156 Mg C/ha. For the first time, microbial mats were documented to contain soil carbon pools comparable to vascular plant-dominated ecosystems, and could arguably be recognized as a unique blue carbon ecosystem. Total ecosystem carbon stocks ranged widely from 2 to 515 Mg C/ha (seagrass bed and mangrove, respectively). Seagrass beds had the lowest carbon stock per unit area, but the largest stock per total area due to their large spatial coverage. Compared to similar ecosystems globally, mangroves and marshes in the UAE have lower plant and soil carbon stocks; however, the difference in soil stocks is far larger than with plant stocks. This incongruent difference between stocks is likely due to poor carbon preservation under conditions of weakly reduced soils (200–350 mV), coarse-grained sediments, and active shoreline migration. This work represents the first attempt to produce a country-wide coastal ecosystem carbon accounting using a uniform sampling protocol, and was motivated by specific policy goals identified by the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative. These carbon stock data supported two objectives: to quantify carbon stocks and infer sequestration capacity in arid blue carbon ecosystems, and to explore the potential to incorporate blue carbon science into national reporting and planning documents.

The constant deficiency of water modality will increase the incidence of complaint, predominantly for unguarded people in undeveloped republics, where practical doses and substitutes are not enthusiastically available. Many wetland-reliant on types in many percentages of the ecosphere are in degeneration; the location of kind dependent on domestic waters are of exact uneasiness. The chief deficiency and impairment of rivers, branch, swamplands, and other interior wetlands have been occupant’s expansion and increasing financial development. The key deficiency and impairment include infrastructure development, land alteration, water removal, pollution, and the plan of offensive eccentric categories. Agronomical governments and approaches have applied a widespread diversity of characteristically conflicting properties on exclusive and coastal wetlands globally. The foremost the impairment and deficiency of wetlands, including seawater swamplands have been revision to other earthly practices. The most important changes were the development of anthropological populations in the coastal areas and the increase in economic activity. The destruction and dissolution of wetlands, an important route of travel, has endangered many species and injured others. Global climate change is estimated to increase the damage and deprivation of many wetlands, as well as the damage or degradation of their species, and harm the anthropological inhabitants who depend on the facility. Many wetlands change as a result of estimated sea level rise, increased storm surges and storm surges, variability in storm surge concentration and frequency, and fluctuations in waterway flow and sediment flow. The effects of global climate change often amplify the effects of wetland withdrawal. It is well known why many types of wetlands, such as lakes and wetlands, are relocated, transformed, or looted, but the benefits of their conservation are often greater than the benefits associated with their alteration. It will be bigger. In wetland conservation, indigenous peoples have often been excluded from the decision-making process. Decisions at many stages ignore the relationship between wetland conditions and the establishment of wetland facilities, and the resulting benefits to the individual. Many of the amenities supported by wetlands are unfunded and are accumulated in civilizations on a national and global scale. The benefits of transforming wetlands include those that stimulate wetland drainage for agriculture and those that stimulate important wetlands through intensive organizations that include advances in municipalities, manufacturing and recreational industries. It is repeatedly exaggerated by money. With the results in mind, high-level potential hazards and zones with different hazard levels and management approaches have been proposed for this wetland.

Attempts to restore the Marshes of Southern Iraq (re-marshification) have started in the summer of 2003. After about 18 years, very little has been achieved in the restoration process. The inundated areas fluctuate on an annual basis. The water-covered areas increase during wet years and shrink during dry years. One component of the re-marshification is missing; that is a plan based on actual water flow data and supplies. As a result, the vast area of the original marshes is suffering from saline water and ecological deterioration. In this paper, sustained water supplies are specified to restore an area of about 4440 km2, about 55.5% of the marshes area of 1973, and reclaim the salinity problem of Shatt al-Arab. The basic components of the water supplies scheme come from two sources: the first is the environmental flow from the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Karkheh, and the Karun rivers, and the second is the seasonal flows generated along the eastern borderline of Iraq (i.e., The Iraq-Iran Borderline). The proposed scheme requires some engineering works to convey the water flow to the intended Marshes area and isolate Shatt al-Arab from the marshes hydraulically.

The Mesopotamian marshes of southern Iraq had been all but destroyed by Saddam Hussein's regime by the year 2000. Earlier assessments suggested that poor water quality, the presence of toxic materials, and high saline soil conditions in the drained marshes would prevent their ecological restoration and doom the reestablishment of the Marsh Arab culture of fishing and agriculture. However, the high volume of good-quality water entering the marshes from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, a result of two record years of snowpack melt in Turkey and Iran, allowed 39% of the former marshes to be reflooded by September 2005. Although reflooding does not guarantee restoration success, our recent field surveys have found a remarkable rate of reestablishment of native macroinvertebrates, macrophytes, fish, and birds in reflooded marshes. However, the future availability of water for restoration is in question, which suggests that only a portion of the former marshes may be restored. Also, landscape connectivity between marshes is greatly reduced, causing concern about local species extinctions and lower diversity in isolated wetlands.