General Advice:  The questions below are to help students focus their studies.  You may wish to have them with you as you read Mitsch and Gosselink and review the Powerpoint presentations on the web.  Alternatively, you might complete your reading and studying and use the questions to check on how much you remember and understand.  Most likely few, if any, of the questions on the exam will be exactly in the form given here.  However, if you know the answers to these questions you should do very well.

The exam questions will all require short answers.  There will be no essay questions, or multiple-choice.
 

Wetlands Formation, Classification, Delineation:

1. How are wetlands delineated from aquatic systems?  What is the conceptual basis for the distinction?
2. How are they distinguished from uplands?  Again what is the conceptual basis?  Along the same lines, what are the 3 Hs?
3. How are the different wetland types distinguished?  Know what is meant by the terms marsh, wet meadow, salt marsh, swamp, mangrove swamp, riparian forest, bog, fen, etc.
4. What would the names of these wetlands be under the Cowardin classification scheme? (System, subsystem, class)
5. Why does the Cowardin classification scheme exist?  Who uses it?  Why does it name wetlands in such a strange manner?   Know the steps of classification (i.e., the system hierarchy)
6. At what sites do wetlands exist in landscapes?  What conditions are needed for wetland formation and maintenance?
7. Why does Alaska have so much more wetland than other parts of the US?
8. How much wetland has been destroyed through filling and draining during the last 200 years?  How do we know what the original acreage was?
9. What is the natural fate (death) of wetlands?
10. What roles do wetlands play as landscape elements?  How are watersheds without wetlands different from those with them?

Hydrology:

1. How does water depth affect wetland structure (the sort of communities present)?
2. How does water flow rate affect wetland processes?
3. What are the different routes of water entry into wetlands?
4. Routes of exit?
5. How are the different inputs and outputs measured? (A big question.  You need not know little details, like the dimensions of a rain gauge, but you should know enough that you could order the right equipment if asked to make the measurements.  For example, you need to know tthat piezometers provide information on the direction of groundwater flow.)
6. How does regional (as opposed to local) groundwater flow complicate wetlands (and watershed) management?
7. What is the difference between a spring tide and a neap tide?
8. Why does tide intensity differ with latitude and time of year?
9. How do you estimate the total volume of water in a wetland?
10. What is a hydroperiod?
11. How do wetlands affect river flooding?
12. What are some clues (indicators) sought out by wetlands delineators to determine past water levels?

Soils:

1. What is the definition of a hydric soil?
2. What characteristics would you look for if you needed to show the presence or absence of hydric soils at a site for regulatory reasons?
3. Why are wetland soils different than upland soils?  Why do they have different coloring, for example, and less layering?  What terms are used for the characteristics observed (e.g., gleying, mottling)?
4. What criteria must be met for a wetland soil to be called organic rather than mineral?
5. In temperate regions the soil designation histosol implies wetland presence.  Why?
6. Why does the National Wetlands Inventory distinguish between organic and mineral soils?  Obviously, they must behave very differently.  How?
7. What is the difference between a saprist, a hemist and a fibrist soil?  What are the common names?
8. Drained histosols make prime farmland.  Why?

Biogeochemistry:

1. Wetlands are often referred to as sediment traps.  Why is this?  How does sediment trapping influence landscape nutrient dynamics?
2. Wetlands also are called nutrient traps.  Know the mechanisms by which nutrients are retained in wetlands.  For example, how do plants affect nutrient retention?  What role does denitrification play?
3. Wetland soils are anoxic below about a millimeter depth.  Why?
4. What is respiration, and why do organisms respire?
5. All eucaryotes and many bacteria have aerobic respiration.  How does this work?  What is the electron acceptor?  The electron donor (energy source)?  Why is this sort of respiration used instead of another?
6. What is meant by the terms electron acceptor and electron donor?  Why is an electron acceptor necessary?  Why do we die when we run out of O2?
7. What is the electron acceptor in denitrification?  The electron donor?  What are the N products?  Why is it important that gases are produced?
8. Denitrifiers are facultative anaerobes.  What does this mean, and why does it matter?
9. What are the electron acceptors of iron and manganese reduction?  Why do these processes occur only within soils and not in the water?  How do they affect the coloration of soils?
10.  Why do nutrients and heavy metals often appear in soil pore water and in water above the soils during manganese and iron reduction?
11. What is sulfate reduction?  What are the electron acceptor and donor?  What is the sulfur product?  Is it gaseous or a dissolved inorganic ion?  What does it smell like?
12. What is methanogenesis (methane production)?  What are its electron acceptors (more than one is possible)?
13. The anaerobic processes take place in a temporal sequence when soils flood and become anaerobic.  What is this sequence?  Why does it occur?
14.  Which products of anaerobic metabolism are toxic?
15. Which products are greenhouse gases?
16. What is fermentation?  How does fermentation accelerate other types of anaerobic respiration?
17. What are chemolithotrophs?  Know their major energy sources (electron donors).  What is their common electron acceptor?
18. Where do they get carbon for making organic compounds if they donít photosynthesize and donít eat organic matter?
19. Where are chemolithotrophs most likely to be found in wetlands?
20. How do chemolithotrophs protect the aerobic environment above soil surfaces?
21. What is bog ore?
22. What is DMS?  Why does it matter that wetlands produce this gas?
23. Know the major pathways of the N, P, C and S cycles.

Plant Adaptations to Wetlands

1. Why are there so few plant species in wetlands?  What are the barriers to invasion by upland species?
2. What is the definition of a hydrophyte?
3. How do hydrophytes get oxygen down to their roots?  Know especially about the aerenchymal system and passive pumps to help this system along.
4. What is the cue to facultative hydrophytes that flooding has occurred and an aerenchymal system is necessary?  What is a facultative hydrophyte anyway?  How is it different from an obligate hydrophyte?
5. How is oxygen brought in across woody trunks and roots (know about lenticles)?
6. Some mangroves have pneumatophores, while others have prop and drop roots.  What are they for, and how do they work?
7. Some plant and animal tissues can survive awhile without oxygen using glycolysis and a sort of anaerobic respiration (or fermentation) in which fatty acids and alcohols are produced.  How exactly does this work, and why is it just a short-term measure?
8. Wetland plants can use this sort of respiration longer than upland plants.  Why?  How have they modified the process?
9. How do plants detoxify the reduced substances around their roots (H2S, methane, metals, etc.)?
10. How do the roots of plants in coastal wetlands prevent salt invasion and plant desiccation?  Why do saline waters desiccate plants anyway?
11. Some plants, for example Spartina (cordgrass), allow some salt in through roots, but rid their fluids of salt at the leaves.  How?
12. How do mangroves that secrete salt onto leaves deal with the salt burden that develops?
13. How does C4 photosynthesis improve the osmotic situation of salt marsh grasses?
14. How do trees in soft-bottomed wetlands keep from toppling over?
15. Plants in bogs are often overgrown by moss.  Is there anything they can do to prevent, or slow, this?
16. Why are so many bog plants evergreen?
17. Almost all carnivorous plants are bog dwellers.  What is it about bogs that favors them?  Why do carnivorous plants eat bugs?  And how are the bugs lured and trapped?
18. How does Sphagnum moss deal with the scarcity of cations in the bogs?
19. How do emergent, floating, floating-leaved and submerged plants differ from one another?
20.  Why do wetland plants always send their flowers to the surface?
21. Some seeds germinate only during droughts.  Why?
22. What are viviparous propagules?  Why do they exist?
23. How can submerged plant populations survive a drought that dries them to a crisp?
24. What methods do plants have to discourage herbivores from making a major dent in their biomass?