Wetlands in

Swamps, Floodplains, and

Estuaries

Wetland definition
EPA - Clean Water Act
Areas inundated or
saturated by surface
or groundwater at a
frequency and
duration sufficient to
support a prevalence
of vegetation
typically adapted for
life in saturated soil
conditions.
Habitable Planet textbook
series

Wetlands International
Areas on which water covers the soil or if water is
present either at or near the surface of that soil. Water
can also be present within the root zone, all year or
just during various periods of time of the year.
Even wetlands that appear dry at times for significant
parts of the year -- such as vernal pools-- often provide
critical habitat for wildlife adapted to breeding
exclusively in these areas.
6% of the planets surface designated as

wetlands.

Ramsar Convention on
Wetlands definition
areas of marsh, fen, peatland or
water, whether natural or artificial,
permanent or temporary, with water
that is static or flowing, fresh,
brackish or salt, including areas of
marine water the depth of which at
low tide does not exceed six metres.

Variety inside the US

bogs and fens of the northeastern and northcentral states and Alaska
wet meadows or wet prairies in the Midwest
inland saline and alkaline marshes and riparian
wetlands of the arid and semiarid west
prairie potholes of Iowa, Minnesota and the
Dakotas
alpine meadows of the west
playa lakes of the southwest and Great Plains
bottomland hardwood swamps of the south
pocosins and Carolina Bays of the southeast
coastal states
tundra wetlands of Alaska.

What makes the wetland

wet?
Groundwater table intersects
ground surface
Occasional inundation of landscape
concavities underlain by material
with low hydraulic conductivity
Tidal inundation

Groundwater outcropping
versus flooding

Groundwater outcropping

Wetland supplied by flooding

--- Okavango delta

Riparian wetland
(floodplain)
Earlier examples
presented -- Mesopotamian
Marshlands
Donana Marshlands
Lecture on
floodplain formation

Coastal wetland -- inundation by

groundwater emerging over saline wedge
and tidal oscillation
Estuarine
Deltaic
Review ESM203
on controls on
distribution of
these two
landform types
and on changing
land-sea levels

Where aquifers meet a coast (or other margin of

a saltwater body)

13

More complex view of the groundwater body

Note the influence of topography, the encounter with the saline ocean, and the
fact that the water table outcrops at the surface in streams, marshes, lakes,
and the ocean.
The slopes of flow lines (blue) are overestimated here by the vertical
exaggeration of the diagram. In reality, they are almost horizontal (hence the
approximations in the preceding text)

Coastal wetland -- inundation by

groundwater emerging over saline wedge
and tidal oscillation
Estuarine
Deltaic
Review ESM203 on
controls on
distribution of these
two landform types
and on changing
land-sea levels and
wetland loss in the
worlds deltas

They provide everything

http://beachwoodhistoricalalliance.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/wetlan
ds-diagram.jpg

Caution
Success of new replacement wetlands depends on extent to
which the new wetland is hydrologically similar to original.
Meaning?
The replacement of a wetland that is dependent on ground
water for its water and chemical input needs to be located in
a similar ground-water discharge area if the new wetland is
to replicate the original.
Replacement wetland may have a water depth similar to the
original, but the communities that populate the replacement
wetland may be completely different from communities that
were present in the original wetland because of differences
in hydrogeologic setting.
Is it hydrology or chemistry? That is important to replicate?

Pond and plug meadow

restoration