Talk:Fen

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 19 January 2021 and 5 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Wahoobbs!!, Ruite006. Peer reviewers: Vanpe022, Steminist04.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:13, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 20 August 2020 and 4 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): DirtGal. Peer reviewers: Redhairrockstar, LapisLazulite.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:19, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Latin and place names

I rewrote this entire paragraph, changing only the grammar. However, I feel there are problems with this section beyond its confusing grammar (hopefully now fixed; as someone who worked as a professional copy editor, I know how to write sentences that make sense, and are not only grammatically accurate, but are also as elegant and laconic as possible).

The problems I see in the section is that there are many assertions of factual statements that are uncited. In addition, there does not seem to be a point to the paragraph; or rather, its point is somewhat off-topic for the article. I do not think the paragraph should be removed, but the *MAIN PROBLEM* is that its statements are ***ALL UNCITED***. I don't know about the subject and am not good at research. Whoever wrote the sentence, or someone with good research skills, would be greatly appreciated if they could solve this instance of Citation(s) Needed. The lack of citations on Wikipedia is its biggest problem. I will mark the entire section as needing citations, rather than labelling individual sentences; that would be too much, as I'd have to mark >50% of the sentences.

If anyone disagrees with my evaluation or edits to the article, feel free to discuss here on the talk page, whether or not you make an edit to the section or not. GngstrMNKY (talk) 19:05, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Where does fen end and bog start?

This article represents a relatively narrow definition and discussion of fens, in part due to a simple regional bias. Fens, especially as they are understood in the North American literature, may also be defined as groundwater-fed minerotrophic ("mineral-fed") wetlands with an accumulation of peat or marl substrate. Fens have been divided into broad categories according to the degree of mineral influence and richness in base cations such as calcium and magnesium. "Rich fens" are those with the greatest enrichment in such cations, followed by "medium" or "transitional fens", and finally "poor fens", which are similar in chemistry and flora to true bogs.

The discussion of the successional place of these systems could also use some additional information. In places with sufficiently cool and moist climate, paleoecological studies have shown that the formation of fen communities often begins with pooled water in topographic depressions and leads to the eventual build-up of peat above the influence of mineral-containing waters, producing a rain-fed or "ombrotrophic" bog. To the limited extent that a "climax community" is still considered a valid concept, open bogs or forested peatlands may be considered the climax community. In warmer or drier areas formation of bogs is not seen, rather fen communities may vary between forested and open status depending on outside "allogenic" factors such as grazing, fire, or flooding.

Examples of plants indicative of fen communities in northeastern North America are:

Rich fens: Brown mosses (Amblystegiaceae) Carex flava - yellow sedge Carex stricta - tussock sedge Potentilla fruticosa - Cinquefoil Senecio aureus - golden ragweed Thuja occidentalis - northern whitecedar

Medium and poor fens: Sphagnum mosses Carex lasiocarpa - wooly-fruit sedge Eriophorum vaginatum - tussock cottongrass Rhynchospora alba - White beakrush Chamaedaphne calyculata - leatherleaf Vaccinium macrocarpon - cranberry Larix laricina - tamarack

While the freedom of availability of nutrients may be relevant to a discussion of fens, in as much as it varies the flora within the fen habitat group to some extent, in general, the considerations listed above seem relevant to the Wetland article which differentiates (perhaps not clearly enough) between the various habitats. It may be that various people have their different terminologies (cf the bog/moor distinction) but it remains that a bog is a very different habitat from a fen, though the two may be physically alongside eachother. Confusing the two classes of habitat will not enlighten anybody.

While that distiction is obvious in the field, we are speaking to people who are at home in front of a computer. The concept therefore needs to be carefully maintained.

• The flora you list for a rich fen is the flora of a fen.
• The flora you list for medium and poor fens is that of a bog. (In both cases, in so far as I know American species.)

Regarding your second paragraph: I shouldn't think anybody would argue with you but, though it might find a place in the fen article, its real home is in the wetland one. :) (RJP 17:09, 19 October 2005 (UTC))

The explanation contained in this publication is fairly succinct: RESPONSE OF BOG AND FEN PLANT COMMUNITIES TO WARMING AND WATER-TAB [1] 7mike5000 (talk) 05:13, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Defining a fen as a successional sere

I changed the definition at the beginning of the article, but retained later material on succession. Thanks to RJP for comments. Wachholder0 23:29, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I have heard that the name of the Finland country come from «Fen Land». Is that true? Just passing throught user.

What is Carr?

The redirect page Carr (fen) points here, but the the only reference in the article to Carr is in a sub-heading under Flora. If we are going to keep the redirect, we need something in the article lede to define what Carr is, and hence why the reader has been redirected here. Otherwise it would be better to turn Carr (fen) back into a redlink, so at least we know that we don't know what it is. -- Chris j wood 12:16, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

• Carr is basically flooded woodland or woodland with water adapted trees and plants.

It is similar to a fen, but occurs more frequently throughout Northern Europe in areas of poor drainage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.197.127.185 (talk) 22:08, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Fen v. Bog

We have:

• Fens are often confused with bogs, which are fed primarily by rainwater and often inhabited by certain sphagnum moss, making them acidic.
• Fens are characterize by their flora, which can include both Sphagnum mosses when pH is low and surface water dominates, or brown mosses when groundwater dominates.
• From Wetland
  • A bog or muskeg is acidic peat land (peat bog).
  • A fen is a freshwater peat land with chemically basic (which roughly means alkaline) ground water. This means that it contains a moderate or high proportion of hydroxyl ions (pH value greater than 7).

This is neither clear nor helpful. Are we saying acidic=>bog, not acidic=>fen? Or not? --Rumping 14:49, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Seems pretty clear to me... —Gaff ^ταλκ 13:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, bog is acidic, fen is neutral or alkaline. The second of your bullet points is incorrect: almost all species of Sphagnum need acidic, mineral-poor conditions and so they rarely occur in fen. Where did that quote come from?

Incidentally, this and the last bullet point are a bit muddled: basic water need not be ground water, but can be surface water (lakes, rivers etc) where this has flowed over mineral-rich rocks. Generally bogs are watered by nutrient-poor water, which may be rain (ombrotrophic), but also ground water or surface water where this has flowed through or over mineral-poor rocks. (Mineral-rich usually means basic, which makes it alkaline; in mineral-poor water organic acids and dissolved CO₂ dominate, making it acidic). So a wetland around a lake over granite or acidic sandstone could be bog, while a similar wetland around a lake over limestone will be fen. Richard New Forest (talk) 19:25, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

German terms

The German translation for Fen is more accurately Moormarsch, not Moor, which means Bog. In some cases it could be translated as Niedermoor, the Dutch Laagveen or Danish lavmoos. The Lincolnshire en Cambridgeshire Fenlands, however, consist largely of Marsch or Moormarsch, Dutch klei-op-veen.Otto S. Knottnerus (talk) 12:14, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)

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Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 07:16, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

• ... that fens, the sister to bogs, are an important source of chemical nutrient cycling and are dominated by mosses? Source: Keddy, P. A. (2010). Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
  • ALT1:... that fens are fed by mineral-rich groundwater, while bogs are fed by mineral-poor precipitation? Source: The Biology of Peatlands

5× expanded by Ruite006 (talk). Nominated by Wahoobbs!! (talk) at 17:56, 20 March 2021 (UTC).

• This article was not created or expanded 5x in the last seven days. On March 20, it went from 490 words to 1111 words, but this is not the 5x expansion required for a DYK. If you want to do a DYK, I'd recommend either writing another 1339 words (in the next six days) or nominating it at WP:GAN (since Good Articles can be nominated for DYK after their promotion). jp×g 22:22, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

•  Note: Nominator is a WikiEd student editor for the Spring semester term at University of Minnesota - Twin_Cities. (course link) The course ends on May 4, 2021. Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 11:13, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

• What counts at DYK is prose characters; prior to expansion by Ruite006, the article had 3061 prose characters, and it currently has 6934. It will need to be expanded to 15305 prose characters, requiring another 8371. Since this has been nominated, albeit by a classmate who hasn't yet contributed to the article, we can allow some extra time for it to be expanded by another 8371 prose characters, but it will require considerable work. Ruite006, do you think you'll be able to do that much expansion soon? I see you've been working on the article in your user area. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:53, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

@BlueMoonset: Depends how much time I have. I just looked, and I have about 5300 characters excluding spaces (I think) mostly ready to move into the article. Given about a week more, I could probably manage another 3000. Ruite006 (talk) 05:49, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

• The article currently has 19231 prose characters, well over the 15305 required to meet the 5x expansion requirement. New reviewer needed. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:51, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

General eligibility:

• New enough: - See comment
• Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: None required.

Overall: The article was not expanded enough when first nominated, but it has since been expanded more than five-fold (~3,000 chars to >18,000), and I'm glad we're being a little flexible on the timing, since this is apparently part of a WikiEd assignment. No QPQ is needed. The coverage of the topic is appropriately neutral and encyclopedic. There's a potential plagiarism issue, but I think it's probably alright: it appears from this web page that Ohio's Ross County Park District has exactly the same language on signage in their parks as is found in the lead and elsewhere in this article. The wording in question appears to have been created by this edit in 2014, and my guess is that someone at RCPD borrowed some of Wikipedia's language for their sign; still, I thought it merited pointing out. The proposed hook is supported by the sources, but it's also a bit of a grab-bag of factoids; I'd prefer something more focused, maybe about how fens are minerotrophic, whereas bogs are ombrotrophic? Finally, the article's claims are broadly supported by inline citations to reliable sources, but there are a couple of paragraphs near the end that have "citation needed" tags; these either need to be supported or removed. Good work on the expansion! The article is tremendously improved! Bryan Rutherford (talk) 16:36, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

• @Bryanrutherford0, thanks for the review! The majority of the content from the Vegetation section was either covered in the new additions, lacked citations, or wasn't about fen vegetation at all, so I removed it. I also rewrote the lead to better reflect the new content. The plagiarism you mentioned was in the lead, so it's gone now. As far as revising the hook, would something like "...that fens, which are distinct from swamps, marshes, and bogs, are habitat for rare and endangered species?" or "...that fens are fed by mineral-rich groundwater while bogs are fed by mineral-poor precipitation?" work? I'm open to suggestions. The citation for either of these would be The Biology of Peatlands textbook, which is cited in the article. I think it'd be good to emphasize that a fen is an actual ecosystem, not just a synonym for wetland. I didn't know any better until I started writing the article. Thanks! Ruite006 (talk) 21:14, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

• @Bryanrutherford0, thank you for the review, I am the student who nominated this page initially for the did you know section per suggestion by the wiki articles exercises. The initial hook I used as I thought the hooks had to be general enough to grab the average viewer's attention, but I am happy to help change it to certainly be more interesting! Ruite006 and I are the students in charge of this article for our WikiProject and we'd love any critiques or suggestions you may have. There should be many more changes to the article before May 4th when the WikiProject class finishes. Wahoobbs!! (talk) 22:48, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

• Looks great! I prefer the hook ALT1 as more focused, but both are acceptable under the rules. There's certainly plenty more room to expand and improve the article, but it now meets the DYK standard and is hereby approved for DYK. Thanks for your responsiveness! -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 15:34, 15 April 2021 (UTC)