Wetlands
What are wetlands? Why are wetlands important? When this country was first settled by Europeans, few of the functions of wetlands were recognized, let alone valued as important to society. Prior to the mid-1970s, the destruction of wetlands through dredging, draining, and filling were accepted practices. As a result, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Michigan has lost approximately one-half of its wetland resources since European settlement. Now, through the work of scientists, hunters, anglers, naturalists, and land managers, we understand the importance of wetlands better than ever before.
What Are Wetlands?
Wetlands are unique and varied ecosystems that are too wet to be considered upland, and too dry to be considered "deep water" habitats. An old farm adage, "Too thick to drink and too thin to plow," gives a hint both at the nature of wetlands as a transitional zone between upland and aquatic habitats, and lack of value attributed to them in the past. Michigan is fortunate to contain a diversity of wetland types ranging from broad expanses of coastal marsh to small isolated bogs. Although each wetland is unique, wetlands are typically differentiated from upland areas by three common characteristics:
- The presence of water at or near the land surface for a frequency and duration long enough to exert a controlling influence on the type of vegetation that can grow there (wetland hydrology)
- The presence of plants adapted to living in saturated soil conditions (hydrophytic vegetation)
- The presence of distinctive soil types which develop under saturated conditions (hydric soils).
These three characteristics serve as the scientific and regulatory basis for identifying and delineating wetlands. Although numerous terms have arisen over the years to describe different types of wetlands across the United States, Michigan's wetland regulatory statute clumps the many different wetland types into three categories: