Marshes are defined as wetlands frequently or continually inundated with water, characterized by emergent soft-stemmed vegetation adapted to saturated soil conditions. There are many different kinds of marshes, ranging from the prairie potholes to the Everglades, coastal to inland, freshwater to saltwater.

Animals like mink, raccoons, opossums, muskrats, beavers, frogs, turtles and lots of species of birds and insects are common in marsh lands. Freshwater marshes can vary in size from very small to very large! The largest freshwater marsh in the United States is the Florida Everglades.

Composed of fine silts and clays, mud flats harbor burrowing creatures including clams, mussels, oysters, fiddler crabs, sand shrimp, and bloodworms. Salt marshes are salty because they are flooded by seawater every day. They are marshy because their ground is composed of peat.

Rivers, creeks, lakes, ponds, and streams are all freshwater habitats. So are wetlands like swamps, which have woody plants and trees; and marshes, which have no trees but lots of grasses and reeds. Freshwater accounts for only three percent of the world’s water. (The rest is saltwater.)

A marsh is an area in transition from land to water. The word marsh comes from the old Dutch word mere, for sea, and it means land that is sea-ish… not sea, but sea-ish, like most of Holland. Marshes can be found often where a river empties into the sea, or along the side of a low, flooded river.

Lentic wetlands are associated with still water systems. These wetlands occur in basins and lack a defined channel and floodplain. Included are permanent (e.g., perennial) or intermittent bodies of water such as lakes, reservoirs, potholes, marshes, ponds, and stockponds.

The term lentic (from the Latin lentus, meaning slow or motionless), refers to standing waters such as lakes and ponds (lacustrine), or swamps and marshes (paludal), while lotic (from the Latin lotus, meaning washing), refers to running water (fluvial or fluviatile) habitats such as rivers and streams.

Lentic water systems consist of still bodies of water, such as lakes, ponds, and seas. During periods of drought these systems will often last longer than their smaller counterparts and organisms can continue to live despite the shortened supplies.

marsh

• bog,
• fen,
• marshland,
• mire,
• moor,
• morass,
• muskeg,
• slough.

Marsh is an English surname of Norman origin, and it derived from the Norman French word ‘Marche’ meaning boundary.

marsh in American English (mɑrʃ ) a tract of low, wet, soft land that is temporarily, or permanently, covered with water, characterized by aquatic, grasslike vegetation; swamp; bog; morass; fen.

1 : marsh, swamp. 2a : a situation that traps, confuses, or impedes a legal morass. b : an overwhelming or confusing mass or mixture a morass of traffic jams— Mary Roach.

An estuary is a partially enclosed, coastal water body where freshwater from rivers and streams mixes with salt water from the ocean. Although influenced by the tides, they are protected from the full force of ocean waves, winds and storms by land forms such as barrier islands or peninsulas.

Chesapeake Bay Watershed

The William Preston Lane,Jr. Memorial Bridge, located in the U.S. state of Maryland spanning the Chesapeake Bay, is one of the most spectacular bridges in the world. The area is subject to violent storms, which makes driving the bridge particularly perilous.

Overall, sharks aren’t a major safety concern in the Chesapeake Bay. The lower Bay’s role as a nursery area for sandbar sharks makes it the most abundant large shark population on the Atlantic coast. But populations of other shark species are limited in this area, so unprovoked attacks are incredibly rare.

The Chesapeake Bay is an estuary—a partially enclosed body of water where fresh water from rivers and streams mixes with salt water from the ocean. About half of the water in the Bay comes from salt water from the Atlantic Ocean. The other half drains into the Bay from its enormous 64,000-square-mile watershed.