Hansville Greenway Ecosystems

Hansville Greenway Ecosystems

Estuary Habitat

Teacher Expert Group

Pictorial Notes (See picture file cards)

Defining Characteristics

Soon, you will standing in a Pacific Northwest icon!The Puget Sound is the second-largest estuary in the United States.An estuary is a body of water formed where freshwater from rivers and streams flows into the ocean, mixing with the seawater. Estuaries and the lands surrounding them are places of transition from land to sea, and from freshwater to saltwater. Although influenced by the tides, estuaries are protected from the full force of ocean waves, winds, and storms by land, mud, or sand that surround them.Estuaries create a rich nursery environment for salmon and other species. Tens of thousands of birds, mammals, fish, and other wildlife rely on estuarine habitats to live, feed, and reproduce.

Producers

Producers are at the beginning of every food web. As you know, all energy comes from the sun (light energy), and plants make food with that energy.Producers are organisms that convert carbon dioxide into sugars for their food through the process of photosynthesis.Plants also make other nutrients for other organisms to eat.

Plankton, which comes from the Greek word for “drifters,” are visible only with a magnifying glass or microscopeand drift with the prevailing currents. These tiny creaturesoccur everywhere in the ocean. They make up the bulk of the plants and animals in the ocean and form the basis of the marine food chain.There are two types of plankton.Phytoplankton is plant plankton and zooplankton is animal plankton.

As you wander the intertidal zone, you will see a variety of producers.You may see what appears to be brown seaweed but is really a mass of plant material called diatoms. Another seaweed-appearing producer is eelgrass, a blooming underwater grass which spreads by roots. Kelp also abounds along shorelines.Bull kelp, a seaweed, is the largest kelp and can grow 200 feet long in one summer!Be sure tobring your measuring tape and find the king of the bull kelp!

Consumers

A consumer is an organism that must eat another organism to obtain food.Consumers eat producers or other consumers and can be herbivores, carnivores, or omnivores.The first level of consumers are called primary consumers.These animals eat plantsand are called herbivores.Secondary consumers eat animals and are called carnivores. Animals that eat both plants and animals are called omnivores.

The entire estuarine environment—shallow waters, mudflats, and salt marshes—serves as a major resting and refueling station for thousands of ducks, geese and shorebirds. These are just a few of the species that stop here to graze on seeds, grasses, and small invertebrates.Seals, waterfowl, and many species of fish feast on the rich and abundant food sources found in estuary waters. This zone is also very important for salmon. Young salmon travel downstream to estuaries where they feed and grow rapidly. Here is where young salmon adjust to salt water and get ready for their ocean journey.

Decomposers

Decomposers consume other organisms that have died. Decomposers are nature’s “trash collectors.”Decomposers include fungi and bacteriaas well as invertebrates such as earthworms and insects. They all work to break down the structures that made up any dead organism, plant or animal.In the process of breaking down the dead plants and animals, decomposers do two important things:

Like all animals, they use oxygen to gain energy and drive their own life processes.
They release nutrients back into the environment for other organisms to use.

Examples of estuary decomposers include flies, snails, crabs, and many worms.These decomposers feed on the detritus, the decaying plant and animal material, found in the estuary.

Human Impact

Estuaries serve as a buffer protecting shorelines from erosion and flooding. Dredging destroys eelgrass and eliminates food and shelter for an entire ecosystem.Stresses caused by overuse of resources and unchecked land use practices have resulted in multiple problems for the Puget Sound estuaries:

unsafe drinking water,
beach and shellfish bed closings,
harmful algal blooms,
unproductive fisheries,
loss of habitat,
fish and wildlife kills,
and a host of other human health and natural resource problems.

Global warming is melting glaciers and heating ocean waters, which causes the sea levels to rise. The effects this will have on the Puget Sound estuaries include the loss of beaches and marshes. Tidal flats will be flooded, and salmon will be in danger.

As our population grows, the demands imposed on our natural resources increase. So too does the importance of protecting these resources for all their natural and economic values.

Retrieved on March 19, 2013

Hansville Greenway Ecosystems

Forest Habitat

Defining Characteristics

Forests occupy one third of the Earth’s land area and are found on all corners of the globe. While there are a few different types of forests, all forests have trees as the dominant plant type.Forests are divided into three different layers: the forest floor, the understory and the canopy. Look at your feet. The forest floor is composed of soil, dead plants and animals, and small plants such as grasses and wildflowers. Look around you at eye level. The understory contains small trees or bushes and is also called the shrub layer. Look overhead. The canopy is made up of the leaves and branches of the trees that dominate the forest.

Producers

Both coniferous and deciduous trees grow in the forest at Buck Lake.Coniferous trees are cone-bearing trees. They are evergreen, and they are plentiful in Washington, which is why our state is nicknamed the Evergreen State. The primary conifer at the Hansville Greenway is the Western red cedar, yet Douglas fir, noble fir, and hemlock are also present.

Deciduous trees lose their leaves in the fall. Deciduous literally means “falling off.” The primary deciduous tree at the Hansville Greenway is the red alder.The reason it is called a red alder is because the inside of the trunk is a red-orange color.Other native shrubs and trees of the Hansville Greenway forest habitat include snowberry, elderberry, red-flowering currant, vine maple, and Pacific dogwood. You might have any of these trees and shrubs in your garden at home.In the understory of the forest you will see salmonberry, stinging nettle, elderberry and sword fern. The one plant that you will see on the top of nearly every stump and downed log is red or blue huckleberry.

As the alder and coniferous trees die, there is more downed wood providing nursery logs where new plants sprout. On the forest floor is duff—decaying organic matter.Have you ever noticed when you are walking through the forest that there are little patches with nothing growing?So little light makes it way down to some parts of the forest floor that nothing can grow there.

Consumers

Many insects and amphibians live in downed trees.Dead or dying trees that are still standing up are called snags, and woodpeckers drill for insects on the trunk and branches of these snags.Cavity-nesting birds, like owls, live in holes left by woodpeckers.

Deer use trees for cover to hide from predators. (The only real predators for deer at the Hansville Greenway today are humans, so they hide from us.)Deer also stay in the trees to stay warmer.They eat leaves and berries from the shrubbery.Bears also live in the forest, eating berries there. Eagles, hawks, and other raptors roost in the trees.This is bad news for the squirrels that inhabit the trees and forest floor.

Decomposers

Like all animals, they use oxygen to gain energy and drive their own life processes.
They release nutrients back into the environment for other organisms to use.

As you are walking through the forest, you may come across a dead log that is falling apart and full of dirt. That is because decomposers have been eating and digesting that log for several years, turning it into dirt that is wonderful for plants.

Bacteria is a decomposer in the forest. Bacteria lives in the gut of animals (including us) and help us to digest food. When the animal dies, the bacteria starts to digest the dead animal.

Fungi are the main decomposers in the forest ecosystem. Mushrooms are the most abundant fungi in the forest. There is a variety of mushrooms in this habitat: some grow on nursery logs, some grow like a shelf on the trunk of a tree, and some grow on the ground. The part of the mushroom you see is the fruit of the fungus. The body of the fungus is growing in the tree or under the ground.

Another decomposer in the forest is the slug. Slugs eat the decaying detritus that no consumer wants to eat. They poop out nutrients that enrich the soil so that plants can grow. There slime is good for them, by the way! It makes it hard for predators like to eat them. The slime makes them gag. (If you tried to eat a slug, wouldn’t you gag too?) And the slime makes it easier for them to slide over rough surfaces like tree bark or prickly dried leaves.

Human Impact

People logged some of the areas around the Hansville Greenway in the 1990s and then planted a few scattered Douglas firs. Alders self-planted, which means their seeds blew in and they grew naturally, and the alders crowded out most of the Douglas fir seedlings.Western red cedar also self-planted, so there are a few cedars scattered among the alders.

Humans introduced Himalayan blackberries to the region to grow in gardens.Birds ate the berries and pooped out the seeds.Himalayan blackberries sprang up all over everywhere!One thing people need to do now is to work together to remove the Himalayan blackberries from the Buck Lake.

Humans also need to plant more shade-tolerant trees—more Western red cedar plus Sitka spruce, Western hemlock, and yew. When we plant new trees, we need to make sure to plant them beyond the drip line of existing trees.

Hansville Greenway Ecosystems

Pond Habitat

Defining Characteristics

A pond is a body of standing waterthat is either natural or man-made. Some definitions of a pond simply say it is smaller than a lake. Some definitions say that a pond is more shallow than a lake—shallow enough that light reaches the bottom throughout the pond. Having light reach the bottom meansponds contain aquatic plants that grow all along their bottom. A variety of animals live in and around ponds.

The Upper and Lower Hawk’s Ponds at the Hansville Greenway are beaver ponds. Beavers originally created the ponds. You can see the beaver dams, and you can see marks on trees and shrubs where beavers gnawed them.

Producers

Lower Hawk’s Pond is really shallow with lots of vegetation growingin the water, under the water, and up out of the water. One important producer in the pond is a groups of organisms called phytoplankton.Plankton, which comes from the Greek word for “drifters,” are visible only with a magnifying glass or microscopeand drift on the water. These tiny creaturesoccur everywhere in the pond. Along with algae they form the basis of the pond’s food chain. The microscopic algae that grows in the pond water and floats on top of pond water often gives it a greenish appearance.

Submerged plants are the plants that grow completely under water while floating plants are those plants that float on the surface of the water like water lilies. Emergent plants grow in shallow water with their stems and leaves above the surface of the water; one example would be cattails. Other types of producers in the pond ecosystem are the shore plants that grow in the wet soil by the edge of the pond. Most of the ones you can see are natives except for some holly bushes.

Consumers

The Upper and Lower Hawk’s Pond is the habitat for ducks and other waterfowl who feed on insects and grass. Because they eat both plants and animals they are omnivores.The pond is also home to swallows and other songbirds who eat insects.The swallows eat massive quantities of mosquitoes, which is very helpful to the humans visiting! Frogs and other amphibians are also live in the pond as do a variety of fish.

Large mammals, like bear and deer, avoid humans, so you probably will not see them.They hide in the forest instead of coming to the pond during the day.

Decomposers

Like all animals, they use oxygen to gain energy and drive their own life processes.
They release nutrients back into the environment for other organisms to use.

Examples of decomposers in the pond habitat are bacteria in the water or bacteria and fungi in the soil under the water or in the mud around the pond. Both the bacteria and the fungi help to break down the dead and decaying organisms in and around the pond.

Human Impact

Humansbuy holly bushes to plant in their gardens.Birds eat the berries and poop out the seeds and plant them all over. Hollies are considered invasive in our area. You can see holly bushes growing up around the ponds.

Although beavers created this 17 acre pond, no fresh evidence of beaver has been seen at this pond in several years. What happened to the beavers? We do not know. Stumps in the water these days have been shaped by saws and not by beavers.

Hansville Greenway Ecosystems

Lake Habitat

Defining Characteristics

A lake is a body of standing waterthat is either natural or man-made. Some definitions of a lake simply say it is larger than a pond. Some definitions say that a lake is deeper than a pond—deep enough that a lake has aphotic zones, places where light does not reach the bottom of the lake. Having no light reach parts of the bottom meansthe lake has places where no aquatic plants grow along the bottom. A variety of animals live in and around ponds.

Lakes are formed when water collects in a basin, and they must have a continual source of water or they will dry up. Lakes generally also have a river or stream that they drain into. Lakes get old naturally over time, filling in with sediments, nutrients, plants, and algae. They also become shallower. This aging process can take hundreds to thousands of years.