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A general definition provided by the textbook Wetlands describes a fen as "a peat-accumulating wetland that receives some drainage from surrounding mineral soil and usually supports marsh like vegetation." [8] Three examples are presented below to illustrate more specific definitions for the term fen.
Pocosin wetland in North Carolina. Pocosin is a type of palustrine wetland with deep, acidic, sandy, peat soils. [1] Groundwater saturates the soil except during brief seasonal dry spells and during prolonged droughts. Pocosin soils are nutrient-deficient (oligotrophic), especially in phosphorus. [2]
The Wetlands Geodatabase is one of the world's largest polygonal datasets (in the civilian sector). The information is increasingly popular and widely used to help identify, conserve, and restore wetland resources across the American landscape. During 2008, the number of website user requests for data exceeded 56.9 million.
Fen meadows have been severely impacted by farming, resulting in hydrological changes, acidification, and nutrient pollution, leaving few preserved into the 21st century. [1] Compositional transformations and increased groundwater flow have the greatest effect this habitat and can degrade peat. [ 2 ]
It is a poetical or dialect word meaning a sheet of standing water, a lake or a pond (OED). The OED's fourth definition ("A marsh, a fen.") includes wetland such as fen amongst usages of the word which is reflected in the lexicographers' recording of it. In a quotation from the year 598, mere is contrasted against moss (bog) and field against fen.
A fen is located on a slope, flat, or in a depression and gets most of its water from the surrounding mineral soil or from groundwater (minerotrophic). Thus, while a bog is always acidic and nutrient-poor, a fen may be slightly acidic, neutral, or alkaline, and either nutrient-poor or nutrient-rich. [ 8 ]
Palustrine wetlands include any inland wetland that contains ocean-derived salts in concentrations of less than 0.5 parts per thousand, and is non-tidal. [1] The word palustrine comes from the Latin word palus or marsh. [2] Wetlands within this category include inland marshes and swamps as well as bogs, fens, pocosins, tundra and floodplains.
The Cowardin classification system is a system for classifying wetlands, devised by Lewis M. Cowardin et al. in 1979 for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The system includes five main types of wetlands: Marine wetlands- which are areas exposed to the open ocean