Do created wetlands replace the wetlands that are destroyed?

Abstract

Wetlands, once perceived as worthless land, are now recognized as a necessary component of a vital landscape. However, due to draining and filling we have lost many of our wetlands. The loss of wetlands can have undesirable effects on the landscape, such as erosion, flooding, habitat loss and deterioration of water quality. While natural wetland systems are being destroyed nationwide, the wetlands restored or created to compensate for these losses are commonly not evaluated or contain large percentages of non-wetland acreage. At the present time we do not have established methodology that can uniformly evaluate a wetland's function, or that is useful for providing guidelines that enhance wetland restoration/creation success.