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Minesing Swamp Essay

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The Minesing Swamp has a high diversification of plants. This diversification contains sensitive and rare species. Due to the sensitive and rare species, Canada has started banning the use of motorized vehicles in the Swamp to prevent the disturbance and harm that the vehicles could cause to the plants. The diversification along with the size attributes to the reason why this wetland was chosen for the Ramsar site. Many of the plant species is provincially rare such as water leaf, love grass, valerian, Oswego tea, three sedges, spike rush, and ram’s head lady slipper. In the Minesing Swamp there are major vegetation complexes. These include The Boreal Wetland Complex, The Deciduous Bottomland Complex, and The Glacial Lake Shoreline. …show more content…

The Deciduous Bottomland Complex is made up of bottomland containing silver maple and bur oak that are resistant to heavy floods, river levee containing basswood and hackberry forests, bur aak, and American elm, and marshes located in the Bottomland Complex that contain cattails and bur-reed. The Glacial Lake Shoreline is made up of deciduous forest of the Nippissing Bluff containing beech, white birch, and sugar maple, which is the most important, and gently sloping Lake Payette Terrace containing cedar or balsam fir forests where scattered pools are present. These different complexes all help with flooding and erosion. The roots of these plants stabilize the soil preventing erosion. Also, the presence of the plants affects the hydrology of the water. This includes the water level, water flow, and water chemistry. The velocity of the water flowing through the Swamp determines how much erosion occurs for the water cutting into the soil, but with trees and other different plants present the water is slowed reducing erosion. The chemistry of the water is influenced by the plants by seeing how much nutrients is present, or what kind of elements appear in the water due to the plant. The major prevention of flooding is due to the

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