Ecology of Red Maple Swamps in the Glaciated Northeast: A ...

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major highways or commercial and industrial
zones. For all of the above reasons, the argument
to preserve red maple swamps as open-space areas
is both logical and compelling.
Human Impacts
Since European settlement of the glaciated
Northeast began over 350 years ago, thousands of
hectares of wetlands have been filled, drained, impounded,
_DoIluted, or otherwise altered. In the core
of urban centers such as New York City, Boston,
Providence, and Hartford, most natural wetlands
probably had been eliminated prior to the late
nineteenth century. Except for agricdtural effects,
which were highly significant in certain parts of the
reg-ion, wetland losses in most rural areas were less
severe until the rapid increase in urbanization that
began in the mid-1900's. Passage of state and federal
wetlands protection laws and regulations has
slowed the rate of conversion, but weak enforcement,
minimum legal size limits, and other exemptions
have allowed certain wetlands to be altered
without a permit. For these reasons, losses of inland
wetlands are still occurring at a significant rate in
many areas of the Northeast.
Documentation of the extent and causes of inland
wetland losses is lacking for most of this
region. Statistics are available only for southeastern
Massachusetts (Larson et al. 1980; Tiner and
Zinni 1988)) southern mode Island (Golet and
Paskhurst 1981)) central Connecticut (Tiner et al.
1989), and Pemsy~vania O\iner and Finn 1986).