How Beavers Helped to Build America

A recent study is on the rise which talks about hows beavers became a major cause of America's development. The theory behind this is that beavers help to keep drinking water safe and promote species diversity and there were as many as 400 million beavers in North America .

The study, published in the January 2012 issue of Geology, reveals how beaver activity up to thousands of years ago affected sedimentation and left its lasting mark within North America's ground.For the study researchers used ground-penetrating radar and near-surface seismic refraction to detect beaver-induced sedimentation.

The study revealed that beavers contributed 30-50 percent of post-glacial sediments in the target area.
“I think it very likely that our results are not unique to the Beaver Meadows study site, but also apply to other regions with relatively low rates of sediment yield to valley bottoms,” Wohl said.
She explained that beaver dams interrupt the flow of a stream, creating a backwater effect of reduced velocity. Sediment deposits in the backwater zone of the beaver pond, with this material remaining “in storage” until river erosion may mobilize it and carry it downstream.
The process is beneficial to humans, she continued, because “wet meadows associated with beaver dams have higher habitat and species diversity for plants, insects and other invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals -- pretty much all forms of life.”
Beaver ponds additionally help to remove carbon and nitrogen from water. When carbon combines with chlorine -- used in many water treatment facilities -- it can result in cancer-causing chemicals, she said, so beavers can help to keep drinking water safe.[1]

Jill Baron, co-director of the John Wesley Powell Center explains, "What beavers do is create environments for storing carbon and processing nitrogen,” The latter, in particular, provides a “very important ecosystem service, because reactive nitrogen flowing down rivers is what causes eutrophication, hypoxia and dead zones in many of the world’s estuaries (such as at Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico)”