Slough (hydrology)

A slough (sluː or slaʊ) is a wetland, usually a swamp or shallow lake, often a backwater to a larger body of water. Water tends to be stagnant or may flow slowly on a seasonal basis. In North America, "slough" may refer to a side-channel from or feeding a river, or an inlet or natural channel only sporadically filled with water. An example of this is Finn Slough on the Fraser River, whose lower reaches have dozens of notable sloughs. Some sloughs, like Elkhorn Slough, used to be mouths of rivers, but have become stagnant because tectonic activity cut off the river's source. In the Sacramento River, Steamboat Slough was an alternate branch of the river, a preferred shortcut route for steamboats passing between Sacramento and San Francisco. Georgiana Slough was a steamboat route through the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, from the Sacramento River to the San Joaquin River and Stockton. A slough, also called a tidal channel, is a channel in a wetland. Typically, it is either stagnant or slow flowing on a seasonal basis. Vegetation patterns in a slough are largely determined by depth, distribution, and duration of in the environment. Moreover, these same variables also influence the distribution, abundance, reproduction, and seasonal movements of aquatic and terrestrial life within the sloughs. Sloughs support a wide variety of plant life that is adapted to rapidly changing physical conditions such as salinity, oxygen levels and depth. In general, sloughs are microhabitats high in species diversity. Open water sloughs are characterized by submerged and floating vegetation which includes periphyton mats dominated by sawgrass typically. The topographical and vegetation heterogeneity of ridge and slough landscape influences the productivity and diversity of birds and fish adapted to that wetland. Fish that typically inhabit sloughs include tidewater goby, California killifish, mosquitofish, and topsmelt. Food habits of fish within sloughs consist of preying upon invertebrates; mostly epifaunal crustacean followed by epifaunal and infaunal worms and mollusks.