Wetland report/Svoboda - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

1 ' � 1 f mannagrasses, prairie cordgrass and mints. Meadows may be present in shallow lake basins, sloughs, farmland "sags" or may border shallow rnarshes on the landward side. Table 4 (Cowardin et al p. 28) includes within its description of Type 2 wetlands as fen and northern sedge meadow. The water regime is described as saturated (B). This description, as used by some plant ecologists and wetland scientists, is specifically limiting and at least in some instances does not suggest that reed canary grass dominated wetlands would fall into this category. Type 3—Inland Shallow Fresh Marshes Inland shallow fresh marshes (Type 3) wetlands have a soil substrate that is usually waterlogged during the growing season and at some times may be covered with as much as 6 inches or more of water. Common vegetation includes grasses, bulrushes, spikerushes, and various other marsh plants such as cattails, arrowheads, pickerelweed, and smartweeds. Common representatives in the North include reed, whitetop, rice cutgrass, carex and giant burreed. Type 3 marshes may nearly fill shallow lake basins or sloughs or may border deep marshes on the landward side. They may also occur as seep areas in agricultural fields resulting from failing drain tile systems or where sand seams are near the surface on hillside slopes. Cowardin et al (Table 4, pg 28) describes the water regime as either seasonally flooded (C) or semipermanently flooded (F). The accurate categorization of Type 3 wetlands is most critical since seasonally flooded wetlands containing reed canary grass are eligible for larger de minimus fills (up to 10,000 square feet) than cattail marshes (only 400 square feet). The difference in hydrological regimes is discussed in the next section. Type 7—Wooded Swamps Wooded swamps (Type 7) wetlands have a soil substrate that is "waterlogged to within a few inches of its surface" (Shaw and Fredine 1956, pg 22) during the growing season and often can be covered with as much as 1 foot of water. Type 7 wetlands often occur along the edges of sluggish streams, on floodplains, on flat uplands and in very shallow lake basins. In the North, trees include tamarack, arbor vitae, black spruce, balsam, red maple, and black ash. Northern evergreen swamps frequently have a thick ground cover of mosses. Deciduous swamps frequently contain beds of duckweeds, smartweeds and other herbaceous plant species. Hardwood swamps frequently are associated with Type 6, shrub swamp wetlands. Table 4 (Cowardin et al 1979, pg 28) states that Type 7 wetlands include all water regimes except permanently flooded. This description is inconsistent with the more specific description of Shaw and Fredine (1956) that describes a Type 7 wetland as having waterlogged soil to within a few inches of the surface throughout the growing season. Wooded swamps (Type 7) are frequently mischaracterized as bottomland hardwoods (Type 1L), however there are significant differences in the hydrological regimes between the two. The nature of these differences is discussed in a subsequent section.