THE BOG GUIDE

The Guide

Field guides are your literary companion to natural history. They provide the work done by naturalists of the past and present themselves to the reader of the modern era. Each guide can span biomes and/or regions and typically contains the following data for each organism documented: geographic range, size, color, genus, species, and related species with a small description. While generally written for organisms, it is not uncommon for field guides to document abiotic factors, like geology or climate. This field guide focuses on what you'll see at the Caribou Bog along the Orono Bog Walk, and as such includes the particular namesake organisms of the area. 

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This field guide is divided into a few sections: Plants, Fungi, Animals, Geology and Anthropology.

Click on each title to visit their detailed sections.

Anthropology

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While anthropology isn't a part of field guides, it is still a key component of understanding any environment for the sake of land use history. Land use history can include anything from former Native American settlements, to former railroad right-of-ways, to farms, to even entire contemporary settlements. 

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Land use history can indicates to the naturalist the overall age and succession of an environment. It can also provide explanation for particular factors in an environment such as invasive species, non-native soils, and particular formations in the earth.

Geology, Hydrology, and Chemistry​

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Covering the abiotic factors of an environment allows for the naturalist to understand why an environment is the way it is. Peatland bogs have a unique geology and hydrology that effectively determines the growth patterns of plants and the distributions of animals.

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Geology and hydrology are behind the processes that make a bog a bog. The characteristic of these two factions of the bog will be covered depth with topics on what a bog is, how it forms, and how groundwater movement determines growth patterns.

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Plants, Animals, Fungi & Lichen

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Determined by geology are seed-producing plants and animals of the Caribou Bog. The underlying geology of the environment determines the growth patterns of understory shrubs and particularly types of hard woody plants. With this said, it is worth noting that flora acts as an indicator of your location in the bog.

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With determined flora, the next tier is fauna. This distribution of geologic factors determines how flora grow and will ultimately set where a naturalist will observe the variety of species .

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Also included in this section are fungi and lichen This separate kingdom of organisms are a world away from seed plants and animals, but nevertheless depend on the interconnectivity of the two kingdoms of life for their own survival.