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Estimated reading time: 1 minutes
Wetlands are difficult to understand by non-specialists, and by many specialists, too. There are differences among the general public perception of what is a wetland, the definitions used by wetland scientists, and the definitions used by regulators on jurisdictional wetlands. This post is designed to introduce wetland definitions. Wetland water quality is regulated under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act.
The definition of wetland used by wetland scientists may not be the same as that used by the wetland regulator.The regulatory definitions of wetlands was first presented by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 1979: “Wetlands are lands transitional between terrestrial and aquatic systems where the water table is usually at or near the surface or the land is covered by shallow water.”
Canada and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) have similar but slightly different definitions. The US Army Corps of Engineers definition is commonly applied by states, too. Their definition is: “The term ‘wetlands’ means those areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions. Wetlands generally include swamps, marshes, bogs, and similar areas.”
This work was originally published on the Applied Ecosystem Services, LLC web site at https://www.appl-ecosys.com/blog/introducion-to-wetlands/
It is offered under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. In short, you may copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format as long as you credit Dr. Richard Shepard as the author. You may not use the material for commercial purposes, and you may not distribute modified versions.
