Abstract
In the 1940s extensive floating marshes (locally called ‘flotant’) were reported and mapped in coastal wetlands of the Mississippi River Delta Plain. These floating marshes included large areas of Panicum hemitomon-dominated freshwater marshes, and Spartina patens/Scirpus olneyi brackish marshes. Today these marshes appear to be quite different in extent and type. We describe five floating habitats and one non-floating, quaking habitat based on differences in buoyancy dynamics (timing and degree of floating), substrate characteristics, and dominant vegetation. All floating marshes have low bulk density, organic substrates. Nearly all are fresh marshes. Panicum hemitomon floating marshes presently occur within the general regions that were reported in the 1940's by O'Neil, but are reduced in extent. Some of the former Panicum hemitomon marshes have been replaced by seasonally or variably floating marshes dominated, or co-dominated by Sagittaria lancifolia or Eleocharis baldwinii.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Beadle, L.C. 1974. Hydrobiological investigations on tropical swamps. Verh. Int. Ver. Limnol. 13: 855–857.
Braun-Blanquet, J. 1932. Plant Sociology: the Study of Plant Communities. McGraw-Hill, New York.
Britsch, L.D. & Kemp, E.B. 1990. Land loss rates: Mississippi River deltaic plain. Technical Report G1–90–2. US Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station, Vicksburg, MS, USA.
Buresh, R.J. 1978. Nitrogen transformations and utilization by Spartina alterniflora in a Louisiana salt marsh. PhD dissertation, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA.
Chabreck, R.H. 1972. Vegetation, water and soil characteristics of the Louisiana coastal region. Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station Bull. No. 664, Baton Rouge, LA, USA.
Collot, G. 1826. A journey in North America, containing a survey of the countries watered by the Mississippi. Ohio, Missouri, and other affluing rivers. O. Lange Firenze. Paris, France.
Cypert, E. 1972. The origin of houses in the Okefenokee prairies. Am. Midl. Nat. 87: 448–458.
Dunbar, J.B., Britsch, L.D. & Kemp, E.B. 1992. Land loss rates: Louisiana coastal plain. Report 3, Technical Report G1–90–2, US Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station, Vicksburg, MS, USA.
Ellery, K., Ellery, W.N., Rogers, K.H. & Walker, B.H. 1990. Formation, colonization and fate of floating sudds in the Maunachira river system of the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Aquat. Bot. 38: 315–329.
Evers, D.E., Gosselink, J.G., Sasser, C.E. & Hill, J.M. 1992. Wetland loss dynamics in southwestern Barataria basin, Louisiana (USA), 1945–1985. Wetlands Ecol. Manage. 2: 103–118.
Gagliano, S.M., Meyer-Arendt, K.J. & Wicker, K.M. 1981. Land loss in the Mississippi River Deltaic Plain. Trans. Gulf Coast Assoc. Geol. Soc. 31: 295–300.
Gaudet, J. 1976. Nutrient relationships in the detritus of a tropical swamp. Arch. Hydrobiol. 78: 213–239.
Gaudet, J.J. 1977. Uptake, accumulation, and loss of nutrients by papyrus in tropical swamps. Ecology 58: 415–422.
Gaudet, J.J. 1979. Seasonal changes in nutrients in a tropical swamp: North Swamp. Lake Naivasha, Kenya. J. Ecol. 67: 953–981.
Godfrey, R.K. & Wooton, J.W. 1981. Aquatic and Wetland Plants of Southeastern United States. The University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA, USA.
Gosselink, J.G. 1984. The ecology of delta marshes of coastal Louisiana: a community profile. FWS/OBS-84/09, U.S. Fish Wildl. Serv. Washington, D.C., USA.
Gosselink, J.G., Hatton, R. & Hopkinson, C.S. 1984. Relationship of organic carbon and mineral content to bulk density in Louisiana marsh soils. Soil. Sc. 137(3): 177–180.
Hogg, E.H. & Wein, R.W. 1988a. The contribution of Typha components to floating mat buoyancy. Ecology 69: 1025–1031.
Hogg, E.H. & Wein, R.W. 1988b. Seasonal change in gas content and buoyancy of floating Typha mats. J. Ecol. 76: 1055–1068.
Huffman, R. & Lonard, R. 1983. Successional patterns on floating vegetation mats in a southwestern Arkansas cypress swamp. Castanea 48: 73–78.
Junk, W. 1970. Investigations on the ecology and production biology of the ‘floating meadows (Paspalo-Echinochloetum) on the Middle Amazon’. I. The floating vegetation and its ecology. Amazonia 2: 449–495.
Junk, W.J. & Howard-Williams, C. 1984. Ecology of aquatic macrophytes in Amazonia. pp. 267–291. In: The Amazon Limnology and Landscape Ecology of a mighty Tropical River and its Basin. Junk Publishers, Den Haag, the Netherlands.
Migahid, A.M. 1947. An ecologica survey of the ‘Sudd’ swamps of the Upper Nile. Proc. Egypt. Acad. Sci. 3: 57–86.
O'Neil, T. 1949. The muskrat in the Louisiana coastal marshes. La. Wildl. Fish. Commission, New Orleans, LA, USA.
Pallis, M. 1915. The structure and history of plav: the floating fen of the delta of the Danube. Linn. Fourn. Bot. 43: 233–290.
Pezeshki, S.R., Delaune, R.D. & Patrick, W.H.Jr. 1987. Response of freshwater marsh species Panicum hemitomon to increased salinity. Freshwater Biol. 17: 195–200.
Rodewald-Rudescu, L. 1974. Das Schilfrohr. Die Binnengewasscr Schwiezerbartsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart, Germany.
Russell, R.J. 1942. Flotant. Geog. Rev. 32: 74–98.
Rzoska, J. 1974. The Upper Nile swamps, a tropical wetland study. Freshwater Biol. 4: 1–30.
Sasser, C.E. & Gosselink, J.G. 1984. Vegetation and primary production in a floating freshwater marsh in Louisiana. Aquat. Bot. 20: 245–255.
Sasser, C.E., Dozier, M.D., Gosselink, J.G. & Hill, J.M. 1986. Spatial and temporal changes in Louisiana's Barataria basin marshes — 1945–1980. Environ. Manage. 10: 671–680.
Sasser, C.E., Gosselink, J.G. & Shaffer, G.P. 1991. Distribution of nitrogen and phosphorus in a Louisiana freshwater floating marsh. Aquat. Bot. 41: 317–331.
Sasser, C.E. 1994a. Vegetation dynamics in relation to nutrients in floating marshes in Louisiana, U.S.A. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, 193 pp.
Sasser, C.E., Swenson, E.M., Evers, D.E., Visser, J.M., Holm, G.O. & Gosselink, J.G. 1994b. Floating Marshes in the Barataria and Terrebonne Basins, Louisiana. Prepared for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Dallas, TX, by Coastal Ecology Institute, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge. LSU-CEI-94-02.
Sasser, C.E., Gosselink, J.G., Swenson, E.M. & Evers, D.E. 1995a. Hydrologic, vegetation, and substrate characteristics of floating marshes in sediment-rich wetlands of the Mississippi River Delta Plain, Louisiana. Wetlands Ecol. Manage. 3(3): 171–187.
Sasser, C.E., Visser, J.M., Evers, D.E. & Gosselink, J.G. 1995b. Vegetation dynamics in a minerotrophic floating marsh in the Mississippi River delta plain, USA, 1979–1990. Can. J. Bot. 73(3): 413–424.
Swarzenski, C.M., Swenson, E.M., Sasser, C.E. & Gosselink, J.G. 1991. Marsh mat flotation in the Louisiana delta plain. J. Ecol. 79: 999–1011.
Taylor, N.C. 1988. Ecological characterization of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park, Louisiana: basis for a management plan. M.S. Thesis, Louisiana State University.
Thompson, K. 1976. Swamp development in the head waters of the White Nile. pp. 177–196. In: The Nile, Biology of an Ancient River. Junk, The Hague, The Netherlands.
Thompson, K. 1985. Emergent plants of permanent and seasonally flooded wetlands pp. 43–107. In: The Ecology and Management of African Wetlands. Dr. W. Junk, The Hague, The Netherlands.
VanDonselaar-Ten Bokkel Huinink, W.A.E. 1961. An ecological study of the vegetation in three former river beds. Wentia 5: 112–162.
VanWirdum, G. 1979. Dynamic aspects of trophic gradients in a mire complex. Proc. Info. CHO-TNO 25: 66–82.
Verhoeven, J.T.A. 1992. Fens and bogs in the Netherlands: vegetation, history, nutrient dynamics, and conservation. Kluwer Academics Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
Wheeler, B.D. 1980. Plant communities of rich-fen systems in England and Wales. J.Ecol. 68: 365–395.
Williamson, G.B., Barker, N.G. & Longstreth, D.J. 1984. Death of wax myrtle along coastal Louisiana marshes. Report No. 83-LBR/097-B52 to Board of Regents, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA.
Wilson, B.D. & Staker, E.V. 1932. Relationship of organic carbon in the peat soils of New York. J. Am. Soc. Agron. 24: 477–481.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sasser, C.E., Gosselink, J.G., Swenson, E.M. et al. Vegetation, substrate and hydrology in floating marshes in the Mississippi river delta plain wetlands, USA. Vegetatio 122, 129–142 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00044695
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00044695