Talk:Swamp

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2019 and 13 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Gasawyer17. Peer reviewers: Mike Compagni, SjminarikWells.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 January 2021 and 10 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Newport0982.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:33, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Iraqi dictatorship
Why is the word "dictatorship" in italics? It makes no sense to me. I'm going to remove those italics, I really don't understand why the sentence is there at all, but for now I'll just change the italics. 75.137.117.1 (talk) 19:48, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Poor photo
This photo was removed. It looks like a junk and rock pile. The subject of this photograph is not a swamp. The background may be. Let's find a better photograph. Enternoted 04:00, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I added a different photo that is hopefully more representative of a swamp. The other photo could be moved to an article on junkpiles near swamps.  Enternoted 20:29, 13 November 2007 (UTC)



I request that we add the biggest wetland in the world "the pantanal" and put some pictures of it.

Biased? Common guys, it is an incomplete list of swamps.
Why this list of swamps unbalanced?--Frozenport (talk) 23:36, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Well you can complete it if you want...--  Someone35  11:11, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Non-swamp photo
The forest in the second photo of the article (titled "A swamp in Belarus") is not a swamp. It is a temporarily flooded forest. It can be seen from the fact that some tree species of the photo, notably Betula pendula and Picea abies are not tolerant of true swamp conditions.

Also the landscape in the last photo (titled "Vasyugan Swamp in western Siberia") is rather bog than swamp. It is mostly even not forested. Krasanen (talk) 09:15, 19 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree. I've removed the images. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 09:26, 19 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I added a new photo from Europe. Krasanen (talk) 11:22, 19 March 2015 (UTC)


 * While you're thinking about what is and isn't an appropriate photograph you might want to look at the one which is currently the last one in the article, the one about Salt Pan Creek in Australia. Strictly speaking this is a coastal salt marsh (what Americans call a bayou) rather than a swamp. Trilobitealive (talk) 19:33, 19 March 2015 (UTC)


 * It is a mangrove stand, also called mangrove swamp, the tree species seems to be Avicennia marina. Salt marsh is a community of lower plants. Krasanen (talk) 21:30, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Makes sense and I bow to your greater knowledge. That's why I asked instead of messing up the article deleting it. I'm not an expert on the etymology of the word, just lived on various spots on the US coastline a long time. I'd like to see an article somewhere which actually defines rather than lists the types like in Wetland. (And perhaps an article which could compare the usage of the words in US and EU, the Pacific islands and other areas.) Still looks like a bayou to me, just the other side from the pitcher plants, grasses, sedges and reeds. Plus the fact that tide and currents don't allow mangrove marshes to undergo the same eutrophication process as real swamps. Where exactly does the "coastal marsh" end and the 'swamp' begin in a coastal bayou with fingers of trees, fingers of grasses and sedges? Trilobitealive (talk) 17:38, 21 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I agree that an exact definition would be a good addition to the article. Not an easy task as the definitions differ somewhat between different countries/continents. The first sentence of the article is a part of the definition: forested wetland. However, it is not enough: e.g. boreal Europe's eutrophic Sphagnum wetlands with dense Norway spruce are not called swamps but spruce mires or spruce bogs. I would say swamp has open water and not Sphagnum. Marsh is not forested. Of course, it may often be difficult to say where marsh ends and swamp begins - the boundaries are not always sharp. Krasanen (talk) 22:26, 21 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't the sentence say swamps are influential in flood management not swamps help with flood management?Jwholme4 (talk) 06:40, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 07:26, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

"Super swamper" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Super swamper and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 March 2 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 19:48, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

"Super swamper" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Super swamper and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 March 2 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 19:48, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Swamp, Marsh or Forested Wetland?
I find the Wikipedia article swamp and its foundation in Wikidata Q166735 quite problematic, as its definitions do not confirm the standardized use in English, e.g. in the Oxford English Dictionary. The article and Wikidata suggest that a swamp is a 'forested wetland', or, alternatively, 'riparian woodland'.

OED, however, is very decisive. A swamp is:


 * a tract of low-lying ground in which water collects; a piece of wet spongy ground; a marsh or bog.

The meaning 'forested wetland' is according to OED more or less obsolete, and was typical of American English during the colonization era.

Marsh, on the other hand, is defined as:


 * 1. (a tract of) low-lying land, often flooded in wet weather and usually more or less waterlogged throughout the year;
 * 2. [Agriculture; regional] A low-lying meadow or tract of fertile farming land requiring drainage; a stretch of grazing land near a river or the sea.
 * 3. [Ecology]. An area of more or less permanently waterlogged mineral (rather than peaty) soil and herbaceous (rather than woody) plants.

Now, the wikidata definition and the corresponding wikipedia article may be thoroughly grounded in ecological literature (though I have some doubts here). The alleged contrast between low-lying herbaceous 'marshes' and elevated forested 'swamps' is illustrated in an often cited article by Douglas A. Wilcox et al., Lake-Level Variability and Water Availability in the Great Lakes, Reston, Virginia, 2007 (SGS Document, Circular 1311), fig. 12, p. 17. The graph is, however, referring to the American situation, which does not correspond to the British and European context, where swamps (Sumpf, moeras, bagno) often are percieved as largely waterlogged areas, but marshes (marsh, Marschen, marais), on the other hand, as partly terrestrial wetlands or even embanked polderlands. Whereas swaps are mostly considered to be wildlands, marshes tend to be potentially available for agricultural use. This can be traced back to the (historical) etymology of both words.

The alleged contrast between swamps and marshes leads to misunderstandings when connecting to other languages, as the item swamp has been linked to typical aquatic woodland words such as German Bruch, Dutch broek, French marécage, Latin palus silvestris, Irish seascann, Breton geun (cf. gwern), Lithuanian raistas, Latvian dumbrājs, Estonian lodu, Finnish luhta, Servo-Kroatian lug'' and Serbian шумска мочвара.

But the same time the word 'swamp' is connected to to more general words for non-forested wetlands, such as Spanish pantano, Portuguese pântano, Polish rozlewisko, Czech bažina, Albanian këneta, Farsi باتلاق, as well as non-Indoeuropean languages.

As the item 'swamp'. then, has largely been occupied by aquatic woodland words, other wetland words had to be connected (more or less misleadingly) to the item marsh (Q30198), though in fact, they refer to waterlogged (swampy) terrains. This concerns German Sumpf and its Scandinavian derivatives, Dutch moeras (though derived from French marais) and Polish bagno, which all exclusively refer to (aquatic) swamps and not to (partly terestrial) marshes.

As a consequence, several other terrestrial marshland-words could not be connected to the wikidata 'marsh' item, because their place was already taken in by 'swamp'-words. This has largely been solved by introducing a second marshland item tidal marsh (coastal marsh) Q62562206. This term is, in fact, an accurate translation of German Marschland and its derivatives in many European languages. Spanish marisma fits equally well in this tidal marsh concept.

Other words that have a more ambiguous meaning were more or less one-sidedly classified as 'marshes', though in many languages they could also be considered as synonymous for waterlogged 'swamps'. This concerns Latin palus, Italian palude, Estonian padur, Irish corcach, Servo-Kroatian močiar (and its cognates, such as Serbian мочвара and Hungarian mocsár), Russian Болото and its deratives, Turkish bataklık, and several others.

Probaby there is no fast or fair solution to this problem, which leads to mistranslations and confusion. But does anyone have am idea how to solve it?

I would suggest that reinstating a second Wikidata-item Swamp (woodland) might do the trick. This, in turn, can provide the connection to the English word 'swamp'. Subsequently, the English article swamp has to be reviewed (and probably renamed) as well, sifting out the more general 'swamp (wetland)' information and giving some attention to the difference between American and European terminilogy. The same might apply to the article marsh.

(I would rather put a direct link here to the wikidata talk page, but I don't know how to do that.) Otto S. Knottnerus (talk) 16:05, 11 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I agree. A wetland is not a swamp. You have demonstrated such, and so your suggestion should be enacted to reflect the exclusive singularity of a swamp and a wetland. I do not know why it is not already so. 101.191.192.117 (talk) 11:38, 16 December 2023 (UTC)