Welcome to Weird Plant Wednesday, a series of field notes about some of the bizarre plants of Alberta's boreal wetlands – plants that AJMers are privileged to see during summer field work in northern Alberta!

There's only one logical place to start this series, and it's the plants that literally help create Alberta's fens and bogs: peat mosses (genus Sphagnum).

For many, it can be difficult to visualize wetlands in grassland ecosystems or crop fields, especially when they appear dry for most of the year. However, wetlands play a critical role in managing floods and droughts by storing and gradually releasing water, filtering out nutrients and contaminants, and providing habitat for diverse species, including migratory birds, amphibians, and over 400 plant species in Alberta alone …

Have you ever wondered what the bottom of the ocean looks like? Or how deep your favourite lake is? Using the science of bathymetry, we can investigate these mysterious biomes without ever leaving the surface! Bathymetry is the measurement of water depth in river, lake, and ocean ecosystems. It is a fundamental component of hydrography which studies the physical characteristics of a water body.

As spring sweeps into Alberta, ice thaws, snow melts away, and seasonal rains and flurries fall, all across the province waterbodies fill and wetlands come to life. Many of us will turn our eyes skyward watching flocks of birds wing their way north from their winter refuges, but from under the fallen leaves, rocks, holes …

Wetlands provide vital habitat for an abundance of aquatic and terrestrial species, including, migratory waterfowl (ducks, geese, and swans).

Many of these important wetland ecosystems can be found nestled within the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba in Canada, as well as North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, and Montana in the United States. So it almost doesn’t come as a surprise that the PPR provides suitable habitat for almost 50% of all North American migratory waterfowl populations to feed, breed, and stop-over during migration movements!