Wednesday November 13, 2024
Maven’s Notebook —
Floating wetlands sound like something straight out of a fairy tale, fanciful landscapes where the laws of nature are suspended. But these buoyant mats of peat and tall, spiky marsh plants called tules are very real. That said, floating wetlands do possess qualities that border on magic.
They historically broke off from marshes in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, and could be so big―up to several acres―that people call them floating islands. And they’re so sturdy that one even bore a herd of livestock to safety during California’s Great Flood of 1862, which filled the Central Valley to depths of 30 feet.
People can walk on floating wetlands too. “They’re squishy, and kind of bob up and down,” says Steven Deverel, principal hydrologist at the Davis-based consulting firm HydroFocus.
But, Deverel and other researchers say, the most wondrous thing about floating wetlands is their potential for restoring the Delta. According to new findings that are preliminary but promising, floating wetlands could help Delta smelt and other imperiled native fish.