The term wetlands refers to a variety of wet environments which include coastal salt marshes, inland freshwater marshes, wooded swamps, bogs, and flood plains. In general, wetlands are ecosystems where land saturation with water is the dominating factor determining the nature of soil development and the types of plant and animal communities living in the soil and on its surface. Basically, all wetlands have soil that is a least periodically saturated with or covered with water. These soils are known as hydric soils.
Wetlands support plants that are adapted to living in water or in saturated soil.
Such plants are called hydrophytes. Indeed, over the past two centuries Americans have repeatedly enacted laws and devised programs that were aimed at encouraging the development of these areas. As a result, more than 100 million acres of our nation's wetlands have been destroyed. In recent years, Americans have come to realize that wetlands are precious ecological resources. Wetlands provide numerous important benefits to society which are summarized below.