Shrub swamp
Shrub swamps are wetlands dominated by shrubs occurring along the shore of a lake or river, in a wet depression or valley, or as a transition zone between a marsh, fen, or bog and a swamp or upland community (Edinger et al. 2002). The substrate (i.e., soil) is usually mineral soil or muck. Shrub swamps are common and quite variable. They may be codominated by a mixture of species, or have a single dominant shrub species.
Shrub swamps once formed an important component of the Syracuse wetland landscape. Like many other local wetlands, most shrub swamps have been destroyed by draining and filling operations. (For Onondaga Creek alone, about 80% of the wetlands [including all types, not just shrub swamps] associated with this stream were destroyed (M. Hall, pers. comm.)).
But shrub swamps can also suffer a different fate, and that is conversion not to dry land but to other types of wetlands, such as Phragmites or cattail marshes. I saw an example of this conversion last summer when I visited Butternut Swamp, a Central New York Land Trust property in East Syracuse. Friends and I parked under interstate Route 481, elevated on bridges over the lowland area. Exploring the wetland, we saw it had been diked and modified to accommodate the right-of-way for a County water pipe (OCWA). Another dike formed the base of a dirt road leading to Butternut Creek, which snaked through the swamp east of 481. Diking the swamp for infrastructure had raised the road and right of way above the water table, and in the process also lowered the substrate in other areas and created broad basins now filled with narrowleaf cattail.
Walking along the dike, I observed ancient-looking buttonbush shrubs surviving at the edge of the cattail monoculture, a few inches higher along the dike. It occurred to me that these plants were the remnants of what may have been a much more extensive area of shrub swamp. I guessed that changes in the water table wrought by the earth moving and diking destroyed habitat for buttonbush by increasing flooding beyond what this plant could tolerate. It seemed too early for a funeral for the buttonbush swamp, since a few old shrubs did remain, hanging on to the dike at their preferred elevation with respect to the water level. But I was saddened by the loss of what was likely a more diverse natural area, a mix of shrubs and herbs over the extent of the swamp.
In any case, you can read more about the ecology of buttonbush, speckled alder, willows and other shrubs that make up these wetlands in the species accounts that follow.
Shrub swamps once formed an important component of the Syracuse wetland landscape. Like many other local wetlands, most shrub swamps have been destroyed by draining and filling operations. (For Onondaga Creek alone, about 80% of the wetlands [including all types, not just shrub swamps] associated with this stream were destroyed (M. Hall, pers. comm.)).
But shrub swamps can also suffer a different fate, and that is conversion not to dry land but to other types of wetlands, such as Phragmites or cattail marshes. I saw an example of this conversion last summer when I visited Butternut Swamp, a Central New York Land Trust property in East Syracuse. Friends and I parked under interstate Route 481, elevated on bridges over the lowland area. Exploring the wetland, we saw it had been diked and modified to accommodate the right-of-way for a County water pipe (OCWA). Another dike formed the base of a dirt road leading to Butternut Creek, which snaked through the swamp east of 481. Diking the swamp for infrastructure had raised the road and right of way above the water table, and in the process also lowered the substrate in other areas and created broad basins now filled with narrowleaf cattail.
Walking along the dike, I observed ancient-looking buttonbush shrubs surviving at the edge of the cattail monoculture, a few inches higher along the dike. It occurred to me that these plants were the remnants of what may have been a much more extensive area of shrub swamp. I guessed that changes in the water table wrought by the earth moving and diking destroyed habitat for buttonbush by increasing flooding beyond what this plant could tolerate. It seemed too early for a funeral for the buttonbush swamp, since a few old shrubs did remain, hanging on to the dike at their preferred elevation with respect to the water level. But I was saddened by the loss of what was likely a more diverse natural area, a mix of shrubs and herbs over the extent of the swamp.
In any case, you can read more about the ecology of buttonbush, speckled alder, willows and other shrubs that make up these wetlands in the species accounts that follow.
speckled alder Alnus incana ssp. rugosa
Alder swamps once occurred in the Syracuse area. One early Syracuse resident remembered these habitats in what is now the downtown area of the city:
East of Montgomery Street, between the Genesee Turnpike and the Erie Canal, was a dense alder swamp . . . Onondaga Street was a cedar swamp filled with logs, stumps, trunks of fallen trees, rapidly going to decay (Town 1886).
Alder swamps once occurred in the Syracuse area. One early Syracuse resident remembered these habitats in what is now the downtown area of the city:
East of Montgomery Street, between the Genesee Turnpike and the Erie Canal, was a dense alder swamp . . . Onondaga Street was a cedar swamp filled with logs, stumps, trunks of fallen trees, rapidly going to decay (Town 1886).