Checkering Bog Near Montpelier Vermont

[Teegate]

All,

Jessica and I returned to Vermont again this week for the second time to visit Chickering Bog. Located near Montpelier it is a "Fen" that was formed 10,000 years ago when the glaciers were receding. It looks so much like a typical pine barren bog that once we left the woods to enter the bog it was as if we were back home here in NJ. Acquired by the Nature Conservency it is now accessible to anyone physically fit enough to walk to it. Many of the same rare plants that we find here in the barrens also grow there. It is a typical quaking bog with vegetation over 35 feet thick.



I was going to put these photos in the "Where is this " thread but decided to not waste anyone's time guessing.

I found this along the trail by the bog as we were leaving.

http://www.nature.org/ourinitiative...ces-preserves/chickering-bog-natural-area.xml



Guy

 

[dogg57]

Nice!

 

[bobpbx]

Our wet, sphagnous areas are mostly fens as well, but I can't get used to the word. People would look at me funny. The word bog is so ingrained in our south jersey vernacular that fen just won't stick.

 

[ninemileskid]

My mother was born and raised in Ireland so the word 'bog" is part of my vocabulary, however, I can't imagine my beloved Red Sox playing at Bogway Park!

 

[Spung-Man]

True fens are wicked cool places, but there is little evidence so far that true fens ever existed in the Pines, even in the Pleistocene. Demitroff (2007: 125–126) provides all the picky details as to differences between bogs and fens:

Bog and fen are peatland terms, applied to wetlands that contain a minimum of 40 cm (16 in) of partially decomposed organic matter (National Wetlands Working Group of the Canada Committee on Ecological Land Classification 1988). The wetlands of the Pines share some characteristics with poor fens(Gignac et al. 2000: 1140, open system groundwater, acidic conditions), but nearly all lack the thick Sphagnum deposits associated with peatlands. Gignac et al. concluded that New Jersey, because of climatic factors, is too far south to have Sphagnum-dominated peatlands (Demitroff 2007: 126).​

I have yet to find Ice Age peat in the Pines, nor have others (see Demitroff 2016: 131) as this place was probably too cool, dry, and windy for extended periods for lots of peat to accumulate. Another fun read on the topic is Radis (1987).

Demitroff M. 2007. Pine Barrens Wetlands: Geographical Reflections of South Jersey’s Periglacial Legacy. MS thesis, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 244 pp.

Demitroff M. 2016. Pleistocene ventifacts and ice-marginal conditions, New Jersey, USA. Permafrost and Periglacial Processes. Paleoenvironment Special Issue. 27: 123–137. DOI: 10.1002/ppp.1860

Radis R. 1987. New Jersey plants: a fen is a bog is a swale is a spong… NJ Audubon. 12, 4: 18–19. ​

S-M

 

[Pinesbucks]

I immediately thought of fenway park as well and the green monstah. So i googled it and read abouts the Fens of Boston. Pretty good reading.

 

[bobpbx]

True fens are wicked cool places, but there is little evidence so far that true fens ever existed in the Pines, even in the Pleistocene. Demitroff S-M

Mark, I disagree with you. Many authors believe what we have are poor fens rather than bogs, but I'm too lazy to dig out the sources.

 

[Spung-Man]

Bob, I agree that Pinelands wetlands are not bogs. Apologies if I left that the impression that we should call Pinelands wetlands bogs. Collins and Anderson (1994) argued that bogs are specifically peat accumulating, nutrient-poor wetlands without water inflow or outflow. This is an important distinction since Pinelands wetlands, unlike bogs, have leaky ecosystems with complex inputs and outputs (Demitroff 2007). Walz (2004) and Palmer (2005), followed Collins and Anderson. I felt that by definition fens contained a minimum of 16-inches of peat. Do you feel that Pinelands wetlands have more than that depth of peat?

Collins BR, Anderson KH. 1994. Plant Communities of New Jersey: A Study in Landscape Diversity. Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, NJ. 308 pp.

Gignac, L.D., Halsey, L.A., and Vitt, D.H., 2000: A Bioclimatic model for the distribution of Sphagnum-dominated peatlands in North America under present climatic conditions. Journal of Biogeography. 27: 1139–1151.

Palmer MI. 2005. The Effects of Microtopography on Environmental Conditions, Plant Performance, and Plant Community Structure in Fens of the New Jersey Pinelands. PhD dissertation, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ. 159 pp.

Walz KS, Stanford S, Boyle J, Southgate WFR. 2006. Pine Barrens Riverside Savannas of New Jersey. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, Division of Parks and Forestry, Office of Lands Management, Natural Heritage Program, Trenton, NJ. 169 pp. ​

S-M

 

[bobpbx]

Mark, where did you learn the requirement that a fen must have 16" of peat? When a true fen by that standard had just 8" of peat while it was forming 10,000 years ago, was it not still a fen?

By the way, I have Collins and Anderson on my shelf too. What page are you referring too?

 

[Spung-Man]

Bob, you ask good questions. Wetlands can be divided into two broad classifications, organic wetlands and mineral wetlands. Organic wetlands are also called peatlands. Peatlands by definition contain more than 40 cm of accumulated peat. Bogs and fens are peatland features (National Wetlands Working Group 1997: 1). Google it.

If the wetland contains less than 40 cm of peat then it is a mineral wetland, and mineral wetlands cannot have bogs or fens. That is why Demitroff (2007) chose traditional Pinelands terms for wetland landforms – spungs, cripples, and savannahs. These are the terms I grew up with, used by early settlers to describe subtle differences between landforms. Origins of each appellative are covered in Pine Barrens Wetlands: Geographical Reflections of South Jersey’s Periglacial Legacy (also see Gordon & Demitroff 2009).

Bonfiglio and Cresson (1982) suggested that spungs were the remains of palsa (frozen mounds in peat ground), but there is little evidence that peat accumulated during frozen periods. A better choice might have been lithalsa (frozen mounds in mineral ground). Fens, bogs, and palsa are peatland features. Spungs, cripples, and savannahs are mineral-land features. Even Alaska's North Slope becomes mineral-land during cold Ice Age periods. The colder we get, the drier we get. The warmer we get, the wetter we get.

Bonfiglio A, Cresson JA. 1982. Geomorphology and pinelands prehistory: a model into early aboriginal land use. In Sinton JW (ed.). History, Culture and Archeology of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Center for Environmental Research, Pomona, NJ: Stockton State College. pp. 15–67.

Gordon T, Demitroff M. 2009. 13 August: spungs, cripples, blue holes, and savannahs (savannas) in the Pine Barrens of Atlantic and Cumberland Counties, NJ. Bartonia: Journal of the Philadelphia Botanical Club. 64: 59–62.
​

S-M

 

[bobpbx]

Mark, earlier, you referred to Collins and Anderson (2004) when describing Bogs. From that same source when speaking about what they call savannas in South Jersey, they indicate on pages 159-160 that "along shallow streams....water acidity with inadequate drainage creates conditions favorable to accumulation of peat...(and)...because of their accumulation of peat, they are more accurately classified as mineral-poor fens. These fens are also associated with Atlantic white cedar swamps."

In regards to 16" of peat, have you never stepped unwarily into an area of seepage up to your crotch in a wet sphagnous shrub savanna in South Jersey?

 

[Spung-Man]

Bob, thanks for prodding me to think this one through! I'm too focused on what is below the organic stuff.

Of course there are mucky places on the old river channel terraces that are peat-like, and we call it peat out of practicality, but is much of it really peat ("true peat" of Waksman 1942: 38, autochthonous)? They are what I think of more as deep organic muck. Often there is Sphagnum in the matrix of Pine Barrens muck, but so are grasses, sedges, branches, pine needles, silt, and the kitchen sink. True peat is mostly Sphagnum, and northern peat is to me different from the local stuff.

A quaking peat bog I visited during coring in Goldstream Valley, north of Fairbanks, AK.​

Thick deposits of true peat do exist in some lower terrace savannah sites (Walz et al. 2006, to 240 cm), but that is not the norm for upper terrace savannah sites where thick peat is uncommon. Is your experience different? That would mean some but not all parts of a savannah can be fen-like. I guess the other bone of contention is that in the few places where I have been in northern fens they are found in carbonate-rich higher pH deposits, again very different places than the carbonate-poor low pH Pinelands deposits. I will come back to this when time permits.

Looking at Waksman (1942: 115), I just learned of a new place name – Indiantown!

​

I had to call Dottie Kinsey at the Township of Hamilton Historical Society to figure this one out. She is amazing. It's next to the Steelman Plantation by the Lochs-of-the-Swamp. I wonder if the three squaws lived there?

http://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.4818455025282&lng=-74.71449751060487&z=16&type=nj1930&gpx= ​

Waksman, S.A., 1942: The Peats of New Jersey and Their Utilization. Bulletin No. 55, Department of Conservation and Development, State of New Jersey: Trenton. 155 pp.​

 

[Teegate]

​

I had to call Dottie Kinsey at the Township of Hamilton Historical Society to figure this one out. She is amazing. It's next to the Steelman Plantation by the Lochs-of-the-Swamp. I wonder if the three squaws lived there?

http://maps.njpinebarrens.com/#lat=39.4818455025282&lng=-74.71449751060487&z=16&type=nj1930&gpx= ​

Waksman, S.A., 1942: The Peats of New Jersey and Their Utilization. Bulletin No. 55, Department of Conservation and Development, State of New Jersey: Trenton. 155 pp.​

Looks like it blew out sometime between 2007 and 2012.

 

[Teegate]

My post has brought up quite a discussion.

 

[Teegate]

The state of NJ owns it.

 

[bobpbx]

Mark, why get hung up on this “true peat” requirement for a fen? As you point out above, peat, while mostly sphagnum moss, is also made up of sedges, here mostly Carex species and club mosses. If you go into a quaking bog here, and you end up sinking to your hip, you’ve landed in “mucky peat” made up of both sphagnum and those aforementioned species--but it is still peat. I can’t imagine, and don’t think it’s true, that we must have 100% true sphagnum moss that is dense and up to 16” deep to classify as a fen.

And yes, we have “poor fens” here, our uplands do not give up enough of the minerals to classify as rich fens. I think we are in agreement now.

For those interested, there is a good thesis written by a graduate student who wanted to know if New Jersey’s savannas are indeed being lost through succession. And note the very first sentence…”Pine Barrens riverside savannas are acidic seepage fens found on the flood terraces of streams and rivers of the New Jersey Pine Barrens”. I'm sure you've seen this paper Mark.

(Smith, 2012; Succession dynamics of Pine Barrens riverside savannas: a landscape-survey approach).

 

[Spung-Man]

Mark, why get hung up on this “true peat” requirement for a fen?

McQueen (1990: 17) states, “A fen is a Sphagnum-dominated wetland…” He also has a great, easy to understand discussion of fens (1990: 29–31).

I can’t imagine, and don’t think it’s true, that we must have 100% true sphagnum moss that is dense and up to 16” deep to classify as a fen.

I don't think I said 100%, but I am of the same opinion as McQueen that a fen should be a Sphagnum-dominated wetland.

I'm sure you've seen this paper Mark.

You bet, nice read in the dearth of savennah papers, although it doesn’t go into much detail on peat dynamics.

Palmer (2005: 4) explains why he characterized savannah as fens, “These wetlands are approximately considered fens due to their status as peatlands with consistent groundwater input…pH cation concentrations, and other nutrient inputs are generally quite low…placing these fens at the poor fen end of the minerotrophy gradient... somewhat similar to the fens in the Midwestern United States.’”

Palmer (2005: 3) also noted that his fens (savannah) had peat accumulations ranging from less than 10 to over 300 cm with typical depths between 30 to 60 cm.” Thin gruel for a fen, and of poor peat quality, with "quite low" nutrient input. Not very good, the Rodney Dangerfield of fens.

Palmer was wise to use his qualifiers, “approximately considered” and “somewhat similar” and "quite low" as savannah reside on the fringes of what we think of as a fen; hence my reluctance to shoe-horn them in. Being a land-surface processes type I prefer not to get bogged down [Jerseyman, that one was for you] in the fen debate. It may be far less messy to call them fen-like wetlands (alluding to certain qualities that make them similar to fens) called savannah that developed in relict ice-age river channels. We are the only ice marginal coastal plain in North America, and as such have landforms that are distinct, even unique, well worthy of their vernacular name instead of trying to over-broaden the term fen.

S-M

 

[bobpbx]

Palmer (2005: 4) explains why he characterized savannah as fens, “These wetlands are approximately considered fens due to their status as peatlands with consistent groundwater input…pH cation concentrations, and other nutrient inputs are generally quite low…placing these fens at the poor fen end of the minerotrophy gradient... somewhat similar to the fens in the Midwestern United States.’”....Palmer (2005: 3) also noted that his fens (savannah) had peat accumulations ranging from less than 10 to over 300 cm with typical depths between 30 to 60 cm.” Thin gruel for a fen, and of poor peat quality, with "quite low" nutrient input. Not very good, the Rodney Dangerfield of fens. S-M

You really do go to great lengths to defend a favored position Mark. I'd rather you would just say..."yeah, you're probably right Bob, even if we disregard the savanna systems, there are probably many places in the heart of the pine barren river systems you've explored where the water supply is low in dissolved nutrients but acidic, and coincidentally where sphagnum is absolutely dominant and deeper than 16 inches...and therefore best classified as a poor fen." Because that is the truth. Take it as gospel.

 

[manumuskin]

Nice!

Thats a Red Eft. The second stage or land stage of a Red Spotted Newt. They emerge from the water where they were tadpoles and walk the land in this stage for generally two years, then for the remainder of their lives they enter the water again and take on a deep olive color but maintain their red spots.Commonly sold in pet stores in the aquatic stage.

 

[Spung-Man]

No problem, Bob, some Pinelands wetlands are perfectly suited to being called poor fen as they share many characteristics with cold climate fen systems! My apologies, as you have proven merit to the argument for a "poor fen" designation. Fen as you are using it describes what is happening below the surface as to groundwater and nutrient fluxes in ecological terms. Still, ecologist Harshberger (1916) did not use fen. I never heard it growing up. What is a good definition of a poor fen?

It's been a decade since I last thought about the term, and it was a struggle then as now. Fen is an Old English word used to describe a marsh, usually in chalkland. Britain's answer to Pineys are the Fen people, as exemplified by a fictional "vocal yokel" by the name of Dennis of Grunty Fen. While that Fenland has a formidable periglacial heritage, much of the land surface has been much changed by 10,000 years of cultural modification. Also, unlike the Pinelands that were never glaciated, ice sheets once covered at least some of the East Anglian fenland.

I bristled because its Pinelands application is modern in application, and not traditional here. Pineys used other appellatives like plains, spungs, brakes, cripples, marsh, meadow, swamp, and savannah to describe what they saw. Many were from the UK, and I can only guess that Pinelands wetlands didn't remind them of fens. To me, East Anglian fen looked very different from the Pinelands wetlands. Maybe I have forgotten about earlier Pinelands applications. Have you seen fen on old descriptions?

Best,
Mark