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Questions:

1. What is a wetland?

2. Name three types of wetlands.

3. List three threats to wetlands.

Answers

1. Wetlands are areas where the frequent and prolonged presence of water at or near the soil surface drives the natural system meaning the kind of soils that form, the plants that grow, and the fish and/or wildlife communities that use the habitat.

2. Marshes are wetlands dominated by soft-stemmed vegetation.  Swamps have mostly woody plants. Bogs are freshwater wetlands, often formed in old glacial lakes, characterized by spongy peat deposits, evergreen trees and shrubs, and a floor covered by a thick carpet of sphagnum moss. Fens are freshwater peat-forming wetlands covered mostly by grasses, sedges, reeds, and wildflowers.

3. Pick your poison:  logging,  runoff, air and water pollution, introducing nonnative species, damming flow of rivers, dredging, diversions, levees, saltwater intrusion . . .

Source: EPA