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Marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens

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are areas with shallow water that are mostly grasslands. Marshes can be freshwater or saltwater and the amount of water in a marsh can change with the seasons and in the case of salt water marshes, can also change with the tide.

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are slow moving streams, rivers or isolated low areas with more open and deeper water than marshes.

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are fresh water wetlands, usually formed in an old glacial lake with a spongy peat base. Most of the bog’s water comes from rain.

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are fresh water peat wetland covered mostly by grasses sedges, reeds, and wildflowers of high pH (alkaline) ground water.

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This action creates whirlpools that draw aquatic invertebrates to the surface, where the birds eat them.

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A group of Phalaropes spinning while feeding in a North Dakota slough.

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The life-supporting importance of wetlands was largely unrecognized in the past. People drained, dredged, dammed and channeled wetlands, eliminated or converted them into dry land or filled them for lakes and water retention areas -- changing wetlands into cropland, pasture and subdivisions, mining the underlying resources, ridding insect life, filling in for road beds or flooding them for open water lakes, and using them for dumping grounds for waste and sewage.

Legal Status/Protection

In the United States some wetlands are regulated under the Clean Water Act and the Rivers and Harbors Act. Some states and counties also have wetland protections. Internationally, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance recognizes significant wetlands and works to conserve them.

There are several ways people try to protect wetlands today including, most importantly, preserving existing wetlands, and also other actions, such as, attempting to substitute newly created wetlands for areas that are destroyed.

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The life-supporting importance of wetlands was largely unrecognized in the past. People drained, dredged, dammed and channeled wetlands, eliminated or converted them into dry land or filled them for lakes and water retention areas -- changing wetlands into cropland, pasture and subdivisions, mining the underlying resources, ridding insect life, filling in for road beds or flooding them for open water lakes, and using them for dumping grounds for waste and sewage.

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Wetlands are some of the most endangered ecosystems on the planet. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), less than half of the original wetlands of the lower 48 states remain, having been lost during the time period of the 1750s through the 1980s.

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The Wetland RAP! Ecosystem Song for Kids by Singing Zoologist Lucas Miller

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by Madeleine Dunphy

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by Donna M. Bateman

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Activities for kids

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by Anthony D. Fredericks

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by Mac Stone

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by Trish Marx

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by Rebecca L. Johnson

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Fabulous Wetlands with Bill Nye The Science Guy (1989)