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What is a wetland?
Where do you go to hear frogs croak, to watch herons fish, and to feel
fuzzy cattails? Wetlands are unique areas with features all their own that
change from season to season. Thousands of plants and animals species call
wetlands their home or a nice place to visit. Wetlands are found all over the
world where low lying lands meet water, or where rivers meet oceans. Wetlands
are land areas covered by water some or all of the time. Water moves very slowly
through wetland areas. When they are not underwater wetland soils remain
water-logged all of the time. Wetlands include marshes, swamps, bogs, wet
meadows, sloughs, potholes, river overflow lands, and tide flats.
A wetland has these three characteristics:
- It is covered by water or has waterlogged
soil for at least seven days during the growing season. Waterlogged soil is
soil that contains so much water that there is no room for oxygen.
- The plant life is adapted. Special plants
have adapted to life in the wetlands, and are called hydrophytes
(this means that they are "water loving". These special plants can grow
without much oxygen from the hydric soil.
- The soil is hydric. Hydric soil is
means that it does not have enough oxygen for some plants to grow, such as
big pine trees.
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