What is a bog wetland?
Bogs are one of North America’s most distinctive kinds of wetlands. They are characterized by spongy peat deposits, acidic waters and a floor covered by a thick carpet of sphagnum moss. Bogs receive all or most of their water from precipitation rather than from runoff, groundwater or streams.
What animals live in a bog?
Bogs provide food and shelter for many important game species, including furbearers such as mink, muskrat, raccoon, and beaver, and game birds such as rails, woodcock, ruffed grouse, turkey, and wood duck.
What are the types of bogs?
Bogs can be divided into three types: (1) typical bogs of cool regions, dominated by the growth of bog mosses—sphagnums (mosses of the genus Sphagnum)—and heaths, particularly leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne); (2) pocosins, or evergreen shrub bogs, of the southeastern United States; and (3) tropical bogs, or tropical tree …
What are the key features of the bog?
Bog is a nutrient-poor peatland characterized by acidic, saturated peat and the prevalence of sphagnum mosses and ericaceous shrubs. Fire and flooding are the main natural disturbance factors.
What is the climate of a bog?
In bogs, vertical water exchange is very slow. Bogs are rain fed (ombrotrophic). They need poorly-drained areas, a climate where precipitation exceeds evaporation, and a nutrient-poor environment that favors peat mosses in their ecologic competition against higher plants.
What is the difference between a bog and a wetland?
Marsh – Also a wetland that is adjacent to a moving body of water, but tends to not have much water movement. It also forms a transition between open bodies of water and dry land. Bogs – These are wetlands that have a hard sealed clay soil bottom that prevents water from seeping out.
What mammals live in bogs?
Mammals like the snowshoe hare, moose, beaver, and muskrats are also found in and around bogs. And on a gruesome note: Preserved bodies are sometimes found in bogs! Because decomposition happens so slowly, anything that falls into a bog, including animals and people, can be preserved for long periods of time!
What grows in the bog?
Moss and some evergreen trees and shrubs thrive in bogs because they can tolerate the acidic soil conditions. Orchids, water lilies, pickerel weed, cranberries and blueberries also grow in bogs. Insect-eating plants like pitcher plants and sundew often are found in bogs.
What crops grow in bogs?
What causes a bog?
A bog is formed when a lake slowly fills with plant debris. Sphagnum moss, as well as other plants, grow out from the lake’s edge. The vegetation eventually covers the lake’s entire surface. Bogs can also form when the sphagnum moss covers dry land and prevents precipitation from evaporating.
Is a bog a body of water?
Bogs are a type of freshwater wetland. A bog is a freshwater wetland of soft, spongy ground consisting mainly of partially decayed plant matter called peat. Bogs are generally found in cool, northern climates. They often develop in poorly draining lake basins created by glaciers during the most recent ice age.
What is the difference between bog and moor?
is that moor is an extensive waste covered with patches of heath, and having a poor, light soil, but sometimes marshy, and abounding in peat; a heath while bog is an expanse of marshland.
Where are bogs found?
Bogs are wetlands found in regions with a temperate climate, such as Ireland, Russia, the Scandinavian countries, Canada, and the northern part of the United States.
What are facts about ecosystems?
An ecosystem is a complete community of living organisms and the nonliving materials of their surroundings. Thus, its components include plants, animals, and microorganisms; soil, rocks, and minerals; as well as surrounding water sources and the local atmosphere.
Are ecosystems made of biomes?
In fact, a biome is made up of thousands, even millions of different ecosystems put together. This means that while a particular forest is its own ecosystem, it also belongs to either the tropical rain forest or temperate forest biome (or one of the many sub-biomes).
What is a biome ecosystem?
Biome and ecosystem are two ecological stages that describe the distribution of species in their environments. A biome is a collection of ecosystems with similar climate conditions. An ecosystem is a collection of biotic factors and abiotic factors in the environment, which interact with each other.