South Carolina's coastal wetland impoundment project (CWIP): relationaship of large-scale research to policy and management

Some 144,000 acres of South Carolina tidelands were impounded in the 1700's primarily for rice cultivation. Today, more than 70,000 of the state's 504,000 acres of wetlands remain impounded, managed for waterfowl and aquaculture. A controversy concerning the restoration and re-use of former rice fields emerged in the early 1970's involving private impoundment owners and managers, regulators, scientists, and concerned citizens. A key ingredient missing from the debate was an adequate base of information upon which arguments could be tested. The Coastal Wetland Impoundment Project (CWIP) was initiated to characterize wetland impoundment systems and compare them ecologically to open, tidal wetlands. Field studies were undertaken on a series of five small, brackish-water impoundments, located adjacent to open tidal wetlands. Although results characterized the ecology of these systems, application of field data to the resolution of policy and management questions has come more slowly.