Slough (wetland)

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The word slough (pronounced /ˈslaʊ/ in British English, rhyming with "cow", and /ˈsluː/ "slew" in American and Canadian English) has several meanings related to wetland or aquatic features.

The word is related to "slay" and "slime", the Dutch slechten "to lower, to cut, to destroy", the Gaelic sloc "pit" or "pool", German schlucken, Swedish sluka, and Dutch slikken "to swallow".^[1]^[2]

[edit] Descriptive meanings

In the United Kingdom, a slough is a muddy or marshy area.

In eastern and southeastern United States, a slough is a type of swamp or shallow lake system, typically formed as or by the backwater of a larger waterway. Unlike a bog or marsh, a slough typically has trees growing in it, often a nearly closed canopy. The term slough is particularly reserved for small freshwater swamps which receive their water from rainfall, with no current or connection to any river system. On coastal barrier islands which are surrounded by saltwater, sloughs are often the only freshwater bodies and are vital habitat for many plants and animals, ranging from tiny tree frogs to large alligators, which otherwise could not exist on these small islands. In the southeast it can also refer to the area of deeper water between a sandbar and a beach or between two sandbars.

On the west coast of the United States and Canada, a slough is a secondary channel of a river delta or a narrow channel in a shallow salt-water marsh, usually flushed by the tide. While this is similar to the term as used in the eastern U.S., the trees native to the west do not grow into the waterway to form a swamp. The secondary channel meaning is particularly common on the lower reaches of the Fraser River in British Columbia, from Laidlaw downstream to the river's estuary. Important sloughs on the Fraser are the Deas, Nicomen and Sea Bird Sloughs, adjacent to the islands of the same name. In the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and in British Columbia, a slough also refers to a slow-moving, canal-like, river or channel, such as the Sammamish Slough, and can appear in the names of oxbow lakes, e.g. Meadowbrook Slough of Snoqualmie River in Washington State.

On the northern Great Plains of the United State, a slough is a pond (often alkaline) usually the result of glaciation (see kettle (geology)); also called a pothole, whence Prairie Pothole Region to describe the area where these sloughs are abundant.^{[citation needed]} On the Canadian Prairies, slough refers to any naturally formed shallow fresh water (or alkaline) pond, usually habitat for waterfowl, synonymous with the term marsh. Slough may also refer to any naturally occurring body of open water smaller than a lake. Sloughy (slew-ee) refers to any murky, muddy body of water, as in a "sloughy lake", a lake unsuitable for swimming.