Fresh Water Aquatic Habitats Flashcards
(24 cards)
Lake
Non-forested, permanent, greater than 10 acres, deeper than 6 feet
Pond
Basically small lakes - ideally want half real, half “fake”
River & Stream
Permanently flowing body of water, contained within a stream channel - pools & riffles
Marsh
Shallow basin up to 3 feet
Swamp
Wetland with a lot of trees, has circulation of water - Everglades
Sedge Meadow
Flat water saturated areas next to a river or late that is dominated by sedges - looks like grass but it is not
Bog
Not a sediment, like a water bed, low nutrient input. Very acidic. Little circulation.
Littoral zone
Near the shore where plants can grow
Limnetic zone
Surface water layer in offshore areas around the littoral zone
Photic zone
Lighted and usually well mixed portion that extends from the lake surface down to where the light level is 1% of that at the surface
Aphotic zone
Positioned low in the photic zones to bottom of the lake where levels are too low for photosynthesis
(Recall that respiration occurs at all depths. Therefore the aphotic zone is a region of oxygen consumption.)
Compensation depth
Depth at which rates of photosynthesis and respiration are equal
Benthic zone
Lowest zone, soil layer right below the water
Thermocline
Middle vertical temp zone - in some lakes trout and salmon prefer this zone (fish and other aquatic life are strongly affect by temp so they align themselves with different vertical zone)
Epilimnion
Top vertical temp zone
Hypolimnion
Bottom vertical temp zone
Stratified
When a lake has layers
Lake profile
Fall & Spring - things are uniform, fish can go wherever and equally distributed, during the summer fish are at the epilimnion (vertical stratification only when wind mixes ep vs Spring, wind mixes whole lake) + Winter - coldest at the top, no mixing & lowest oxygen
Ephemeral pond
Not permanent pond, important to have these so there are habitats w/o predators (IE - frogs)
Riparian zone
Along the shore
Emergent aquatic vegetation
Cat tails
Floating aquatic vegetation
Lily pads
Submerged aquatic vegetation
Underwater
Sphagnum moss
Peat moss (tied to bogs forming when a lake slowly fills with plant debris, moss and other veg grow out from the plants edge until eventually covering the lake’s entire surface + bogs can also form from moss covering dry land preventing precipitation from evaporating)
