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<br />99 <br /> <br />8. St ream flow regulation; and <br /> <br />9. Indicators of ground water supplies. <br /> <br />In addi tion to these functional characteristics, the federal Evaluation <br />framework includes a set of socio-economic and cultural values, such as <br />commercial shellfish fisheries, fisheries, timber harvest, wildlife harvest <br />(i.e., ducks, beaver, mink, muskrat, nutria, otter), wastewater treatment, <br />energy from peat and other plant material.s, "ther renew,able natural resource <br />values, recreation, aesthetics, and areas of historical and archaeological <br />importanc=. A brief overview of the functional characteristics follows. <br /> <br />Food Chain (Web) Production <br /> <br />Specialization for food consumption in a wetland habitat. is not <br />different from that in other communities, except that wetland adapted fauna <br />have to be able to move in and around water and to take food from water as <br />well as from near it. Uke other ecosystems, food chains range from very <br />simple to very complex. Among truly aquatic fo;ms, the~onsumption of algae <br />by small free-swimming plankton, which in turn are eaten by small minnows, <br />which may subsequently be eaten by fish, provides a cla,;sic example of a <br />longer food chain involving secondary and tertiary consumers. Most food <br />chains are tightly structured because animals must be opportunistic feeders, <br />using what is available at a given time. As a result, food <br />interrelationships are so complex that they are spoken of as a food web. <br />Food web complexity is determined largely by combinations of limiting <br />factors (which ultimately direct changes at the communil:y level) interacting <br />with the biota native to the system. Production and fo,od web relationships <br />in wetlands and their downstream dependent systems are lloverned, in part, by <br />regional climatic conditions and hydrologic properties "f the watersheds in <br />which they are situated. <br /> <br />General and Specialized Habitat for Land and Aquatic Sp.ecies <br /> <br />Wetlands, with their combination of plant and watelr regimes, support a <br />great diversity of flora and fauna and contain the most productive wildlife <br />habitat of all land forms (Toburen and Windell 1977). They provide valuable <br />feeding, reproductive, and cover habitat for a wide divl!rsity of wildlife <br />species, inducing waterfowl, at least 50 other game and fur-bearing species, <br />and hundreds of nongame species of mammals, birds, fish" reptiles, and <br />amphibians (Shaw and Fredine 1956). <br /> <br />It is obvious to even the most casua.l observer tha:t wetlands are a <br />resource providing ideal habitat for many species of pl,mts and animals. <br />Whereas the larger animals that are high in the food crulin may constitute a <br />small portion of the total biomass, these large animals of the wetlands are <br />the conspicuous end products and indicato,rs of the productivity of wetlands. <br />Many wetlands are viewed a8 unique islands of' species richness often <br />isolated in less productive or even sterile Imv1ronment!s (i.e., in the <br />