The Becher Wetlands – A Ramsar Site: Evolution of Wetland Habitats and Vegetation Associations

This book is a landmark study of the Holocene evolution and functioning of a suite of seasonal wetland basins in the temperate coastal zone of Western Australia. In 2001, a series of discrete small scale wetlands on the Becher cuspate foreland in Western Australia, were nominated as a Ramsar site because of their scientific values. These values pertained to their setting, their method of formation and deepening, their history of infilling, their complex hydrological mechanisms, and their dynamic hydrochemical and vegetation responses. The wetlands were the subjects of intense curiosity, observation, measurement, and experiment, for over 10 years. The results of this interest and passion are presented here in order to demonstrate the considerable importance of what lay beneath the ordinary surface.

Amongst the new ideas presented in the book are the importance of stratigraphy in understanding wetland development, the significance of physiographic setting in determining wetland development, and the unravelling of several different evolutionary pathways in wetlands of the same basic origin.

The book would be of interest to a great variety of readers such as university researchers/students in the fields of geography, ecology, environmental science/engineering, botany and biology, and also would be of benefit to water/soil resource managers, land management planners, conservation agencies and environmental management/protection agencies.