Assignment 7: Camosun Blog

LD

1.  How was the bog formed?

Thousands of years ago, the Cordilleran ice sheet stretched out toward the southern end of Puget Sound, overlaying the vicinity presently called Vancouver with a kilometer-thick layer of frosty ice. 12,500 years prior, as the ice withdrew, it deserted a scarred scene, thick with frigid till. A colossal bit of ice stayed in the territory which is presently Camosun Bog, as the ice dissolved gradually, a lake slowly formed.

2. What is the keystone species of a bog?  Read about Sphagnum moss.  How does Sphagnum maintain the acidic conditions.


Low oxygen, low nutrients and acidic conditions are favoured by sphagnum moss, the keystone species of any bog.  Also named peat moss, without Sphagnum , the bog would not exist. Sphagnum maintains the wet and acidic conditions favoured by bog plants.  It has the incredible ability to absorb water like a super sponge and it pumps hydrogen ions into its surroundings, thus creating a very acidic environment. Sphagnum cells selectively absorb mineral ions from and release hydrogen ions into the surrounding water. 

3.  What is peat?  How is it different from soil?


Peat moss is acidic, so depending at the pH stage of your soil, it is able to boom its acidity. The pH stage of peat moss is around 4.4, while neutral soil can have a pH of round 7. The biological functions of Sphagnum mosses act to create a habitat helping peat formation, a phenomenon termed 'habitat manipulation'. Soils consisting usually of peat are known as histosols. Peat forms in wetland situations, in which flooding or stagnant water obstructs the flow of oxygen from the ecosystem, slowing the decomposition.

4.  Why is digging through a bog like digging through time?

Peat decays so slowly that digging through Camosun bog is a bit like digging through time.  Each metre below the surface represents about 400 years. The bog has so many layers to it and years and years pass by so it would take forever to dig through each layer. A metaphor would be like a bog is a book and each page has a certain depth to it taking a lot of time to uncover and reach the very end.

5.  We never found any bodies in the bog, but some artifacts were preserved in Camosun bog.  What were they?

 We have never found bodies in Camosun bog, but other interesting artifacts have turned up, including a hockey puck from the 1940s when the local boys used to play hockey on Devil's Hole. We have found large numbers of glass marbles in all areas of the bog, also a chewed-up sunglasses were found on sight. A button hat, coins and lots of real garbage was found because of how the bog used to be seen as a garbage dump.

6.  This woman remembers playing hockey in Camosun bog.  What were some of her observations?

Near the end of 1938 she would play goalie because she necessarily was not good at hockey she spoke. The lake also used to be much bigger before and the other boys would build a fire nearby for fun. She also said that there was a hole on the south west corner of the fence and every year the custodian would fill it in slowly.

With the Stanley cup finals on, everyone in Vancouver is a hockey fan, it seems.  The boys used to play hockey on Devil's hole, the pond in Camosun bog, about seventy years ago.  Camosun bog was seen as a wasteland, skating rink, garbage dump, party playing place and a golf driving range.

7.  How are bogs carbon sinks?  Why is this important?

A carbon sink assimilates more carbon than it discharges, and along these lines brings down the centralization of CO 2 from the environment. The slow rate of decay in a bog means that it is an excellent carbon sink, a main reason to global warming.  Bogs convert carbon dioxide to peat and the preserved peat do not release their carbon until they slowly decay over thousands of years.  Burns bog is often called the "Lungs of the Lower Mainland".  Globally, such degraded peatlands emit nearly three billion tons per year of carbon dioxide that was previously locked up in the decaying matter, or roughly 6 percent of all such greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. That water is the key to the formation of the peat itself, which is a product of submerged plants that cannot be decomposed by microbes quickly. "Oxygen travels about 10,000 times slower in water than air. So the oxygen won't dissolve fast enough for the aerobic microbes to be able to use it to chew up all the organic carbon that's there," Dise says.

8. Camosun bog, məqʷe:m,  is the traditional territory of the Musqueam people. How long have they been using this area for food, medicine and culture?

Camosun bogs, məqʷe:m,  is the conventional territory of the Musqueam human beings. There is proof in their use of the lavatory place for the past 4000 years.  According to their oral records of the place, their pastime here dates returned 9000 years.  Camosun bog has been a source of story, lifestyle and medication for the Musqueam.

9.  What nearly destroyed the bog?  

It was the advancement of a city that about devastated the swamp. Drains introduced in 1929 diminished the water levels, obliterating the Sphagnum greenery. The subsequent inundation of supplements caused the local lowland plants to be outcompeted by obtrusive ones. The hemlock trees, established in peat, carry on like a woods planted in a waterbed. Trees handily fell over in a windstorm. You can jump up the backwoods and watch the ground move in waves.

10. The change in abiotic conditions caused "invasives"  to go into the bog.  These are actually native forest species and not invasives to BC but they are invaders to a bog.  What plants are these?

Local species incline toward a high-water table with low supplement, high acidic conditions. These conditions existed at Camosun swamp for a long time. At the point when the City of Vancouver infringed upon Camosun swamp, channels were introduced. Water levels went down. sphagnum greenery kicked the bucket, rotted and became soil. supplement levels went up. Intrusive species effectively outcompeted the swamp plants in these new conditions. A hemlock backwoods sneaked in through the procedure of biological progression.

INVASIVE SPECIES EG.
groundcover:
polytrichum moss
fern (deer, sword, bracken, all the ferns)
skunk cabbage
salal
juncus
bushes:
huckleberry                                       
some blueberry species
salmonberry
blackberry
trees:
Western hemlock
birches
Mountain ash

skunk cabbage

 mountain ash

huckleberry

11.  What are the native plants in a bog? 

NATIVE BOG SPECIES Eg.
ground covers:
sphagnum moss (keystone species)

arctic starflower
bunchberry
cloudberry
bog cranberry
sundew
bushes:
labrador tea
kalmia
bog blueberry
trees:
lodgepole pine (also shore pine)
Saskatoon berry

Caskara

 kalmia

 caskara

sundew