What's a Wetland? Why are wetland ecosystems important? Swamps vs. marshes vs. bogs

We are in a wetland. Man, take a look around. This here is a wetland, people. Now what is a wetland? A wetland is a land that is wet. You might have guessed that. But it's kind of muddy. It's kind of stinky. And it's kind of buggy. Alright. It means a lot of different things. They can look a lot of different ways. It's the zone between the land, which is up here, and the water, which is down here. That transition zone is right there in between, and that's what you're going to call a wetland. It could be saltwater, or it could be freshwater. And it might actually dry up from time to time. But if it gets wet regularly when it rains, then we'd consider it a wetland. Now there's a couple kinds. There are marshes, there are swamps, and there are bogs. Now marshes and swamps are part of a bigger body of water, like this river. And then a bog is kind of like a puddle, but it's not as deep and the soils are kind of special there. It's between a puddle and a pond, I would say. Now a marsh is a wetland with lots of that stuff. That is a marsh. There's lots of grass right there. And marshes are dominated by grass and maybe leafy plants like these things up here in the front. A swamp is dominated by trees. Now wetlands are very, very important places. It's not really the kind of place you want to come down and have a picnic. Maybe. Maybe you do. But wetlands are super important to us. Now one of the big things that they do is they will protect us from floods. Now what you're going to see here is that all around, before you can get up to the land, you've got to go through these plants there. Especially those grass. The roots go down, they knit together into the soil and they're going to absorb the power of the waves that wash ashore. Now we're inland quite a ways, but down closer to the coast, when they get a big hurricane, that wave comes ashore called the storm surge which can cause a lot of destruction. Well, those grasses are going to stand together kind of like when you're playing Red Rover and they're going to absorb the power of those waves and lessen the flooding. Now like I said, the soils in wetlands are very spongy a lot of times and when we get lots of rain, even if you're not living close to the coast, you can get flooding. But wetlands will reduce the flooding because they soak up a lot of that extra water. Now wetlands provide home to a ton of living stuff. Tons of living stuff. Wetlands also act like little fish preschools. We actually call them nurseries. A lot of the fish that we like to catch go into wetlands and that's where they lay their eggs. So you may or may not catch a big fish right there in a wetland, but it's where that big fish that you want to catch spent the first part of life. So wetlands are super, super important. Just a ton of wetlands. I like wetlands because they're beautiful.