Diverse Glacial Wetlands

Historically wetlands have been viewed as abhorrent and disease-ridden landscapes; however, there is much ecological value in these ever changing habitats. Eric Thobaben and Stephen Hamilton set out to better understand and characterize a variety of wetland’s geomorphic setting, water sources, and hydrodynamics within their study “The Relative Importance of Groundwater and its Ecological Implications in Diverse Glacial Wetlands” (2014). Thobaben and Hamilton’s study examined a set of 24 wetlands that ranged from bog to fens to swamps like conditions within southern lower Michigan and considered the relationships between a wetland’s water sources and its geomorphic setting, water level variation and biogeochemistry.

Estimating and comparing
Wherein fens and swamps are circumneutral groundwater dominated systems that typically occurred in basins that spanned a range of landscape positions and were associated with surface inlets and outlets. Comparatively, sphagnum bogs were strongly precipitation dominated, highly acidic, and were restricted to isolated basins located higher on the landscape. Moreover, maximum and mean water levels were lower in groundwater dominated wetlands that had outflowing streams. Finally, mean ammonium and phosphate availability was generally higher in groundwater-dominated systems, whereas all precipitation dominated wetlands had low nutrient availability. In respects to the dissolved magnesium used in the study, Thobaben and Hamilton believe that Mg2+ is useful for the hydrogeomorphic classification of wetlands in glacial landscapes where carbonate minerals impart high Mg2+ concentrations to groundwater. Therefore, Thobaben and Hamilton suggest that these methods and results will be useful for characterizing other wetlands in the Great Lakes Region. After reading this article, I am curious to know if the same methods for studying glacial formed wetlands could be used in other countries with similarly formed wetlands. Moreover, because glacially formed landscapes are relatively young, how will these wetlands change over time? In order to find the answers to these questions studies set up in new locations and longitudinal studies could be