What are Wetlands & Watercourses?

Groundwater meets surface water

Wetlands are living systems and over time have the ability to move and become bigger in size.   There are different types of wetlands based on their geographical location as well as the type of plants and animals that live within them.

Generally wetlands are discharge points where ground water meets surface water. However, wetlands DO NOT have to be WET or contain water

The Connecticut Inland Wetlands and Watercourse Act considers wetlands as land, including submerged land, and requires towns to define wetlands by soil type.

Wetland soil types are: poorly drained, very poorly drained, alluvial and floodplain. 

The identification of wetlands by soil types allows wetlands to be identified during times of drought when there is no surface water present, or during winter when plants species that are indicative of wetlands are not observable. For more detail, visit the CT DEEP Inland Wetlands & Watercourse website and the CT General Statutes Chapter 440.

What is a Watercourse?

A watercourse can be a river, stream, brook, waterway, lake, pond, marsh, swamp, bog, and all other bodies of water, natural or artificial, vernal or intermittent, public or private. This includes vernal pools.

What is an Intermittent Watercourse?

An intermitted watercourse has the ability to cease flowing for weeks or months each year and sometimes only has flow for hours or days following a rainfall.

However, there are some very distinct characteristics that make up a watercourse such as: a defined permanent channel and bank, evidence of scour or deposits of decayed vegetation (detritus), the presence of plants capable of growing in wet conditions (hydrophytic vegetation), or the presence of standing or flowing water for a duration longer than a particular storm event.

What is a Vernal Pool?

A vernal pool is clasified as a type of watercourse and can range in size but is most recognizable as a basin depression in the landscape.

Vernal pools fill with water when snow melts and spring rains arrive. Vernal pools can also fill with water when groundwater rises in the fall and winter. Many vernal pools are covered with ice in the winter months. 

Periodically, by late summer, vernal pools (generally but not always) dry out they do not support breeding populations of fish but provide a critical habitat for many animals such as wood frogs, fairy shrimp, and the endangered blue-spotted salamander.

Information and images on this webpage are credited to the Connecticut Department of Energy & Environmental Protection. July 2020.