Diorama illustrating a glacial kettle with wetlands and a field, showing flora and fauna.

Blue Flag

Section of a diorama showing blue flag.

Yellow Pad Lily

Section of a diorama showing yellow lily pads on the surface of a lake.

Right Common Cottontail

Section of a diorama showing right common cottontail on the shore of a pond

Red Wing Black Bird

Section of a diorama representing a red wing blackbird on a field of Right Common Cottontail

Painted Turtle

Section of a diorama showing a model of a painted turtle on a log

Lake Muskrat

Section of a diorama showing a muskrat on the shore of a lake.

Diving Beetle

Section of a diorama showing a cross-section of a lake with a diving beetle on it

Bullhead Catfish

Section of a diorama showing a cross-section of a lake with several brown bullhead catfish in it.

Tussock Sedge

Section of a diorama showing Tussock Sedge on the side of a water stream.

Soft Rush

Section of a diorama showing soft rush.

Bulbous Buttercup

Section of a diorama showing bulbous buttercup.

Field

The field was created when people cleared the land.

Diorama of a field with vegetation and a stream of water

Black Willow

Painting illustrating black willow trees

American Elm

Section of a painting in the back of a diorama showing an American elm

Skunk cabbage

Section of a diorama showing sunk cabbage

Witch Hazel

Section of a diorama showing right witch hazel.

Red Maple

Section of a diorama showing red maple.

Common Box Turtle

Section of a diorama showing a common box turtle

Cinnamon Fern

Section of a diorama showing cinnamon fern

Chessnut Oak

Section of a diorama showing a chestnut oak with an owl on a branch.

Glacial Kettle

A block of ice embedded in sand and gravel melted about 15,000 years ago, leaving this pond known as a glacial kettle.

Plants and animals gradually settled here, forming distinctive wetland communities such as the cattail marsh with its many inhabitants, shown in the right section.

Section of a diorama showing a cross section of a swamp.

Swamp

As sediments built up, they provided drier ground for a succession of woody plants, and marsh turned into swamp where plants like Skunk Cabbage and Cinnamon Fern grow, whown under the Red Maple in the center section.

Section of a diorama showing a cross section of a lake

From Field to Lake

Part of Hall of New York State Environment.

Museum diorama depicting the evolution of a landscape from a swamp (right), to a forest (middle), to a cleared grassy space (left).
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Evolution of the landscape

A block of ice embedded in sand and gravel melted about 15,000 years ago, leaving this pond known as a glacial kettle.

Plants and animals gradually settled here, forming distinctive wetland communities such as the cattail marsh with its many inhabitants, shown in the right section.

As sediments built up, they provided drier ground for a succession of woody plants, and marsh turned into swamp where plants like Skunk Cabbage and Cinnamon Fern grow, shown under the Red Maple in the center section.

The field at left was created when people cleared the land.

Wetlands

Wetlands are key environments for maintaining the diversity and abundance of living things. While some plants and animals thrive in the cleared land with its stream, creating a field eliminates much of the diversity that the wetland supports. People have come to appreciate the importance of wetlands, and there a efforts to protect and restore what remains.

Life in early June

In spring, the time of this scene, many plants and animals reproduce. Flower clusters of the Skunk Cabbage are already shriveled at the plant base, and the Cinnamon Fern’s spore-bearing leaves are conspicuous in the swamp. The Jack-in-the-pulpit attracts Fungus Gnats, while bees pollinate irises and buttercups in the field. Salamanders have laid their eggs in temporary pools among the trees; Bullhead Catfish guard a school of young.

Muskrats nibble on the Cattails in the pond and also use them to build a shelter. Caterpillars feast on plant leaves and butterflies they become feed on nectar of flowers. The Box Turtle eats insects as well a mushrooms and fruit. Other insect hunters range from dragonflies and the Diving Beetle to the Bullfrog and Brook Trout. Many kinds of plants and animals find their niche in the pond or forested swamp.

Plants

Each field, stream, marsh and lake is a different environment which supports different plant and animal inhabitants. Many of these are dependent on one another for their well-being, or even for their existence.

To maintain life in an area there must be a balance between the supply of food plants and the number of animals present. Man, by changing an environment, interferes with this balance in the natural world. These changes may be due to the cutting of a forest, draining of a lake, or by the introduction of plants and animals which would have no natural enemies in the area.