Draft:PCPP Clam Pudding Pond

Of the estimated 450 ponds in Plymouth, Massachusetts Clam Pudding Pond is one of 36 in the town that are designated by the state's Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program (NHESP) as "coastal plain ponds." In their natural state the water levels in these unique natural communities rise and fall with groundwater/aquifer levels, making them inhospitable to obligate aquatic plants in low water years, and inhospitable to woodsy plants in high water years. Over thousands of years plants that have adapted to high and low water conditions and to the low nutrient, sandy soils of the coastal pine barrens ecoregion they are found within, have developed, many of which are state and globally rare. At the same time, these adapted plants and the ponds themselves, are particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic activities, most especially changes to water levels brought about by dams, municipal wells and changes to the overall hydrogeologic conditions.