Welcome to Jacobs Creek Educational Wetlands!
This park is open from 9am till Dusk there are a couple places to park and a few other caches to find here. This is a great place to pend a few hours and take in mother nature. I hope you enjoy being here. Construction began in 2002 and was completed in 2012.
To claim this as a find you will need to complete the following requirements.
1. Answer the following questions:
A. Baised on your observations what type of wetland is this?
B. What is the benefit of wetlands to the sourounding area?
C. What typs of soil defines wetlands, and what do they contain?
2. Post a picture of you at the wetlands with your log.
What is a Wetland?
A wetland is exactly what its name implies; land that is wet for all of or a large portion of the year. This umbrella term can apply to a wide variety of different locations on our planet including marshes, swamps, bogs, fens, vernal pools, saltmarshes, and mangrove forests. Each of these habitats may be unique, but they all center on water to function.
Wetlands are vitally important habitats for huge numbers of species and are one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. The high nutrient content in wetland soils is a boost for plant growth that in turn provide food and shelter for a variety of specially-adapted animals. Many species of invertebrate, bird, fish, reptile, amphibian, and mammal only live in wetlands, including over 1 /3 of the United States' listed threatened and endangered species!
In additiont to providing habitat, wetlands also perform many ecosystem services like flood prevention, nitrogen fixation, and buffering of pollution into other bodies of water. The secret to this functionality is a combination of a wetland's soil type as well as its water-loving plants. Wetlands are defined by hydric soils, soils containing lots of organic matter (like dead plants and algae) with a high capacity to take in and store water. As surface runoff from storms or snowmelt enter the wetland, the hydric soil acts like a giant sponge to soak up water into the porous subsur-face layers in a process called infiltration.
In addition to helping prevent flooding and erosion, infiltration also functions as a natural filter much like the Brita in your fridge. Tiny pores in the soil allow water molecules to pass through while straining out and leaving behind excess sediment, nutrients, metals, and other pollutants. Not only does this keep the groundwater clean, but it also leaves behind a nutrient-rich environment in which the diverse wetland plant life can thrive.
Plants in the wetlands also perform various useful ecosystem functions. Riparian Plants, those that grow along the water's edge, help to slow the flow of runoff as it passes over land. Slower moving water infiltrates more easily into the ground where it can be soaked up by plant roots. Willows, Dogwoods, Alder, and varity outher grass and flower species are all important riparian plants.
Emergent Plants, those that grow out from under the water, play a large role in nutrient uptake. The familiar Cattail is great at absorbing excess nitrogen and phosphorus that can cause major issues in streams and lakes. It's for these reasons and more that wetlands are a conservation priority at the state and federal levels, and why laws exist to protect and restore wetlands to our land.
The importance of Jacobs Creek Wetland
According to National Association of Wetland Managers Pennsylvania has lost about 56% of its wetlands thats about 627,000 acres. Jacobs Creek Wetland adds back to this number although the property is only 14 acres and only 12 of them are wetlands every little bit helps.The other unique feature of Jacobs Creek Wetlands is they are built on a hill, water enters the top from a spring and slowly flows through the 8 ponds on the location before the remaining water enters Jacobs Creek. with most of the property being fram land many tons of clay and other material had to be removed from this site inorder to build these wetlands.
Types of inland Wetlands
In Pennsylvania, we are most familiar with a wetland type called a Marsh. Marshes are by far the most common type of inland wetland, and are among the most productive and diverse ecosystems on the planet! Marshes are flooded or partially flooded year-round, and are dominated by plants like cattails, bulrushes, and lily pads that build up over many years to form rich organic soils. Marsh plants are also excellent at filtering out excess nutrients and sediment from runoff before it enters streams and lakes. Not only does this prevent the larger body of water from becoming polluted, but it often means more growth in the wetland itself!
Other wetlands called Bogs and Fens are dominated by a plant called peat moss, along with other unique plants. Bogs get their water and nutrients from rainwater, and their acidic waters are home to unique and hardy plants like cottongrass, cranberries, and carnivorous pitcher plants! Fens are similar to bogs but they source their water from the water table below ground, giving them more nutrients and less acidic soils to allow more plants to grow like.
Swamps are a wetland type dominated by woody plants, often water-loving trees like Cyprus, Tupelo, and Red Maple or shrubs like Buttonbush and Silky Dogwood. Few true swamps remain in Pennsylvania, but this wetland type remains widespread across the Southeastern United States. Southern swamps are home to many unique animals including American Alligator, Barred Owl, Anhinga, Prothonotary Warblers, Softshell Turtles, and the presumed-extinct Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
Lastly, Vernal Pools are a type of wetland common in hilly regions of the Appalachian Mountains, and are formed when rainwater or snowmelt fills depressions to create a temporary pool of standing water. Though they may look like a pond, vernal pools are only filled with water for a portion of the year, usually in the spring following snowmelt, and evaporate by summer. While this prevents animals like fish to live in these pools, vernal pools provide the ideal, low-predator breeding habitat for amphibians like Spotted Salamanders, Jefferson’s Salamanders, and Wood Frogs.