125 articles
A Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia
A Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia (DIWA) is the Australian national inventory of nationally important wetlands, first published 1993 with editions in 1996 and 2001; inclusion requires meeting at least one of six ANZECC 1994 criteria, and the online Directory now holds over 900 sites.
Aerenchyma
Aerenchyma is plant tissue with enlarged, interconnected gas spaces that transport oxygen to flooded roots. Forms lysigenously, schizogenously, or expansigenously; key to wetland adaptation, crop flooding tolerance, and methane venting.
Alternanthera philoxeroides
Alternanthera philoxeroides, alligator weed or alligatorweed (pig weed), an amphibious Amaranthaceae herb from southern South America; invasive floating-mat aquatic weed in the USA (since 1897), China (since 1892), and Australia, spread by vegetative fragments.
Althaea officinalis
Althaea officinalis, marsh mallow, a Malvaceae perennial of Europe to Siberia and NW Africa whose dried root (Althaeae radix) is an EU-approved traditional demulcent for cough and mild gut discomfort.
Aquatic plant
Aquatic plants (hydrophytes, macrophytes) are plants adapted to water, in emergent, floating-leaved, free-floating, and submerged forms. Derived from terrestrial ancestors, they use bicarbonate-based carbon uptake, provide habitat and water-quality benefits, and are managed as invasive nuisances.
Australasian wetland flora
Australasian wetland flora is the collective vegetation of Australia's and New Zealand's swamps, marshes, bogs, billabongs, and floodplains, from water lilies to floodplain trees such as river red gum.
Australian state and territory wetland policy
Australian state and territory wetland policy is the set of state and territory laws and strategies protecting Australia's wetlands, since land and water management rests with the jurisdictions.
Bayou
Bayou: a slow-moving creek or still water channel of the Gulf Coast, from Louisiana French and Choctaw bayuk (small stream), first in English 1766; distinct from a swamp.
Betula nigra
Betula nigra, river birch (also red, water, or black birch), a fast-growing deciduous Betulaceae tree of eastern US streambanks and floodplains, with exfoliating bark, spring-fruiting catkins, and bronze birch borer resistance.
Blanket bog
A blanket bog is a rain-fed peatland that blankets the underlying topography across large areas, forming mainly in oceanic climates with over 1,000 mm of annual rainfall.
Blue carbon
Blue carbon is carbon captured and stored by ocean and coastal ecosystems, chiefly salt marshes, mangroves, and seagrass meadows, whose anaerobic soils sequester carbon up to ten times faster than tropical forests and support carbon markets.
Bog
A bog, also called a peat bog, is a peat-forming wetland fed almost entirely by precipitation, producing acidic, nutrient-poor conditions, often carpeted with Sphagnum moss, where deep peat accumulates.
Borneo peat swamp forests
Borneo peat swamp forests, also called Borneo peatlands, are tropical rainforests on waterlogged peat in Borneo's lowlands. Key facts: about 69 Gt regional carbon store, under 1 million ha intact left, orangutan habitat, severe fire, and drainage degradation.
Bottomland hardwood forest
A bottomland hardwood forest is a seasonally flooded deciduous forest on the river floodplains of the southeastern and south-central United States, dominated by gum, oak, and baldcypress.
Brackish marsh
Brackish marsh: tidal wetland in estuaries where seawater mixes with freshwater, with water salinity 0.5-35 ppt and soil salinity 0.5-18 ppt, between salt marsh and freshwater tidal marsh in vegetation and position.
British National Vegetation Classification
The British National Vegetation Classification (NVC) is a phytosociological plant community classification for Great Britain, commissioned in 1975 and published 1991–2000 as five volumes of British Plant Communities, with 286 communities from about 35,000 samples.
Cattle egret
Cattle egret (Western Cattle-Egret, Ardea ibis; formerly Bubulcus ibis): small stocky white heron that forages beside cattle for insects; split from Eastern Cattle-Egret in 2023; spread naturally from Africa to the Americas and beyond.
Chao Phraya freshwater swamp forests
Chao Phraya freshwater swamp forests: a tropical moist broadleaf ecoregion (WWF ID 224) in central Thailand's Chao Phraya lowlands, about 38,858 km², now almost entirely converted to rice paddies and Bangkok, with relict swamp habitat in Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park.
Checkered keelback
Checkered keelback (Fowlea piscator, formerly Xenochrophis piscator), also called Asiatic water snake: a common semi-aquatic South and Southeast Asian natricine snake with keeled scales, a checkered spot pattern, frog-and-fish diet, and disputed mild venom status.
Coastal squeeze
Coastal squeeze is the loss of intertidal habitats such as saltmarshes and mudflats when fixed defenses like sea walls prevent them migrating landward as sea level rises.
Coniferous swamp
Coniferous swamp: a forested wetland with at least 50 percent conifer canopy (white cedar, tamarack, balsam fir) where sphagnum moss is not the dominant substrate; saturated soils, hummocky surface, northern lake-basin settings, distinct from bogs and hardwood swamps.
Constructed wetland
Constructed wetland (artificial wetland, treatment wetland): an engineered wastewater treatment system using wetland plants, soils, and microbes. Shallow FWS or subsurface-flow beds remove BOD, nutrients, and metals at low energy and cost versus activated sludge.
Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment
Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment are engineered wetland systems that treat wastewater, with subsurface flow beds for secondary treatment and free-water surface wetlands for tertiary treatment.
Cornus sericea
Cornus sericea (redosier dogwood, syn. Cornus stolonifera), a deciduous North American Cornaceae shrub to 4 m of wet soils, hardy to USDA zone 2, with red winter stems, and an emerging invasive in Europe.
Cowardin classification system
The Cowardin classification system is the 1979 US Fish and Wildlife Service scheme for classifying American wetlands and deepwater habitats, now the basis of the National Wetlands Inventory.
Cyperus papyrus
Cyperus papyrus, also called Nile grass, is a tall aquatic sedge native to Africa and northern Israel, best known as the raw material for papyrus paper in ancient Egypt.
Danish Plant Communities
Danish plant communities (plantesamfund), a term coined by Warming in 1895, are recurring species groupings classified nationally via Danveg's 130 communities and legally via CORINE and the EU Habitats Directive.
De Biesbosch National Park
De Biesbosch National Park (Nationaal Park De Biesbosch) is Europe's largest freshwater tidal area, in North Brabant and South Holland, formed by the 1421 St. Elizabeth flood, a national park since 1994, home to about 300 beavers.
Drosera anglica
Drosera anglica (English sundew, mikinalo) is a circumboreal carnivorous sundew, an allopolyploid hybrid of D. rotundifolia and D. linearis with 2n = 40, native also to Kauaʻi's montane wetlands.
Drosera capensis
Drosera capensis, the Cape sundew, is a perennial carnivorous plant native to South Africa's Cape Provinces. It traps insects with sticky mucilage tentacles, curls its leaf into an outer stomach, digests prey with enzymes, and self-pollinates readily.