Marsh info
Marshes provide habitat for many types of plants and animals. Plants found in marsh areas must be able to survive in wet environments that contain low oxygen levels. Many of these plants therefore have tubes within their stems. This allows air to move from the leaves down into the root zone. Most marsh plants have rhizomes, which is a mass of roots, which are used for underground storage and reproduction. Examples of these types of plants include sedges, cattails, papyrus and sawgrass.
Some aquatic animals, like some fish, salamanders, and beetles and so on, can usually live with the low oxygen amounts in the water which is common in marsh settings. Marshes are important for their water quality protection functions, including the trapping of sediments and relocation of nutrients, as well as storm water and floodwater retention. The pH in marshes tends to be neutral to alkaline, whereas bogs, and their accumulation of peat, are typically more acidic.
Types of marshes
Different marsh types are organized mainly by their location and salinity, which is the saltiness or dissolved salt content of a body of water. These two factors greatly affect the type of animal and plant life that can survive in these environments. The three main types of marshes are salt marshes, freshwater tidal marshes and freshwater marshes. Since this is an inland freshwater lake area with no tidal forces at work here, the rest of the description will focus on freshwater marshes only. Freshwater marshes make up the most common form of wetland in North America.
Shallow Emergent Marsh
This marsh type has a mineral and or shallow organic soils that are moist to saturated and only seasonally flooded. The plentiful species found in these marshes include rice cutgrass, bulrushes, reed canary grass, bluejoint grass, and Joe-pye weed.
Sedge Meadow Marsh
These types of open wetlands are forever saturated and only seasonally flooded. Soils are typically a shallow organic muck, although mineral soils could also be present. Beaked sedge, tussock sedge, bladder sedge and bristly sedge are dominant plant types in these meadows.
Cattail Marsh
This type of marsh is self-evident and dominated by the common cattail and or narrow-leaved cattail. The muck and or mineral soils found here are typically flooded with extremely shallow standing water throughout the entire year.
Deep Broadleaf Marsh
Water depth in this type of marsh is normally over one foot year round, although in dry summers, some marshes may have only saturated soils. These types of marshes contain organic type soils, which Assist in the growth of arrowhead, pickerelweed, marsh marigold and bur-reed.
Wild Rice Marsh
This type of marsh is self-evident and dominated by wild rice. It has an organic soil substrate that is flooded with one to two feet of water throughout the summer.
Deep Bulrush Marsh
This type of marsh flourishes in open water; meaning that they are found along the shores of lakes and ponds. Water depths here range from one to six feet. Usually, soft-stem and hard-stem bulrushes dominate this type of marsh.
**Logging requirements**
DO NOT POST ANSWERS IN YOUR LOG.
Send the following answers to me via email.
- The text "GC5E67W Lebanon Marsh" on the first line
- What type of marsh do you believe this to be? Read "ALL" of the following definitions carefully.
- Measure the length of the marsh area. (see waypoints)
- Without leaving the sidewalk, how deep does it look, and does it look consistent throughout the marsh?
- What is the source of the marsh’s water source, and how many are there?
- What is the purpose of this marsh? A = recreation B = Erosion control and water retention C = wildlife
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