Wetlands of the World, “B...-”
for geography and social studies classrooms, home schools.

Situtated in the Congo River watershed, Bangweulu is one of the world's great wetland systems, comprising Lake Bangweulu, the Bangweulu Swamps and the Bangweulu Flats or floodplain.

The swamps act as a check on annual flooding downstream in the Luapula River by releasing water slowly through many lagoons and channels, preventing the excessive flooding of Luapula valley in the rainy season.

Bangweulu means ‘where the water meets the sky’.

FYI ~ Lechwe are antelope found in marshy areas. Their legs are covered in a water repelling substance allowing them to run quite fast in knee-deep water and thus escape from predators.

Bayous are bodies of water found in flat, low-lying areas, and refer either to an extremely slow-moving stream or river, or to a marshy lake or wetland.

Wetlands called bayous are associated the Gulf Coast region of the southern United States and the Cajun culture centered on the state of Louisiana.

The word “bayou” is thought to originate from bayuk, the Choctaw word which means “small stream”.

The Biebrza Marshes are a complex series of wetland habitats of global significance located on the Biebrza river valley in northeastern Poland.

Biebrza Valley was set aside as a National Park in 1993 and is under the protection of the RAMSAR Convention.

The Great Black Swamp, a glacially caused wetland in northwest Ohio, United States, extended into extreme northeastern Indiana. The swamps and marshes, interspersed with higher ground, were drained and settled in the second half of the 19th century.

The Limberlost Swamp, written about by author Gene Stratton-Porter, is at the western end of the Great Black Swamp.

The Story of the Great Black Swamp is a television documentary produced by WBGU-TV, Bowling Green, Ohio.

Bogs, wetlands that accumulates acidic “peat”, a deposit of dead plant material like mosses or lichens, are widely distributed in cold, temperate climates.

A bog is a very early stage in the formation of coal deposits. The peat is often harvested and dried to use a fuel for heating homes.

Bogs are also sites of archeological finds of naturally preserved human corpses like Grauballe Man from the Iron Age found in Denmark.