The Red Sea and the Classification of Wetlands

 

Every week Jews read a section of the Torah broken up into portions to cover the entire Torah each year. Year after year. We refer to the Torah portion as the Parsha. This week was Parshat Beshalach, when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt through the sea referred in the text as yam suf (13:18), which is incorrectly translated as the Red Sea (at least by Hollywood). According to my Rabbi, the yam suf is correctly translated as the “sea of reeds.”  

In the middle of our Torah discussion, the Rabbi shifted to a discussion of whether the sea of reeds was a swamp or wetland. It seems that the Rabbi had recently been corrected that swamps are now wetlands. Let’s clarify, a wetland is an area where water is present at the surface or covers the soil for some portion of the year.  The prolonged presence of water is the determining factor in which plants grow in the area and animals inhabit the area. The type of habitat and soils give the various wetlands there more common names.  

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses the Cowardin system to classify wetlands for the National Wetlands Inventory. In this system, wetlands are classified by landscape position, vegetation cover and hydrologic regime. The Cowardin system includes five major wetland types: marine, tidal, lacustrine, palustrine and riverine. This system of classification; however, has not made a big impression on the public.

Various other organizations classify wetlands differently. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers classified wetlands by their geomorphic setting, dominant water source (e.g. precipitation, groundwater or surface water) and hydrodynamics. Generally, wetlands are organized into four general categories:marshes, swamps, bogs, and fens. There are also sub-categories and minor categories.  

Marshes which can be tidal or inland; salt or freshwater are defined as wetlands that are frequently or continually inundated with water, characterized by emergent soft-stemmed vegetation adapted to saturated soil conditions. There are many different kinds of marshes. Saltwater tidal marshes are some of the most ecologically productive because of the inflow of nutrients and organics from surface and/or tidal water. Tidal freshwater marshes are located upstream of estuaries. Tides influence water levels but the water is fresh. The lack of salt stress allows a greater diversity of plants to thrive.

Inland marshes are dominated by herbaceous plants and frequently occur in poorly drained depressions, floodplains, and shallow water areas along the edges of lakes (like the great lakes) and river systems likr the Florida Everglades. There are also ephemeral marshes that float in and out of the regulatory definition of wetlands: Wet meadows; Wet prairies; Prairie potholes; Vernal pools. It is my belief that the sea of reeds was a marsh though there is open dispute of what type.

Then there are swamps. I love the word swamp. The Dismal Swamp in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina is so descriptive. It was a desolate place that was also a haven and hope for escaped enslaved people and Native Americans. A swamp is any wetland dominated by woody plants, usually trees. There are many different kinds of swamps categorized by the type of tree and soil. Swamps are characterized by saturated soils during the growing season and standing water during certain times of the year. The highly organic soils of swamps form a thick, black, nutrient-rich environment for the growth of water-tolerant trees such as Cypress, Atlantic White Cedar, and Tupelo. There are also Red Maple swamps and Pine Swamps. Forested swamps are found throughout the United States.

Bogs 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. As a result, bogs are low in the nutrients needed for plant growth, a condition that is enhanced by acid forming peat mosses.

The acreage of bogs declined historically as they were drained to be used as cropland and mined for their peat, which was useful as a fuel and a soil conditioner. Recently, bogs have been recognized for their role in regulating the global climate by storing large amounts of carbon in peat deposits.

Bogs are unique communities that can be destroyed in a matter of days but require hundreds, upon hundreds of years to form naturally. Bogs are believed to form in two ways; as sphagnum moss grows over a lake or pond and slowly fills it, or bogs can form as sphagnum moss blankets dry land and prevents water from leaving the surface.

Related to the bog is the fen or pocosin. Fens are ground water-fed peat forming wetlands covered by grasses, sedges, reeds, and wildflowers. These evergreen shrub and tree dominated landscapes are found on the Atlantic Coastal Plain from Virginia to northern Florida; though, most are found in North Carolina. Usually, there is no standing water present in fens, but a shallow water table leaves the soil saturated for much of the year. Willow and birch are also common.