What is a Pond? Find out about Succession ***What is a pond? A pond is a body of water. Well, there are many different kinds. Some can be small and some can be very large. Roots can grow throught the pond because it is 12-15 feet deep near the center. The sun can warm up the pond top to bottom, so roots and plants can grow. Items on the surface like lily pads make shade to cool off the water. Light reaches the bottom of the pond and the spots that the lily pads and duckweed or other plants shade won't get much light. At night the pond,of course, cools off. ***A pond is a good place to find many living animals. You can find insects or plants in or out of the pond or arond the pond in large groups. Birds and other animals visit the pond for rest and food. There may be fish if the pond is strong enough to last for awhile before becoming coming another landform like a meadow. Millions of microscopic life come into the pond supplying food for the larger animals. Every plant or animal, alive or not, is food for some hungry creature. Smaller animals or plants is eaten for food by the next larger animal or mammal. Once the largest animal is dead the smaller ones feed upon it. This process is called the food chain. Absolutely nothing is wasted in a pond by other creatures. Read below to find out how the pond can disappear. Succession Click here to see my succession animation. ****"Succession" is the word that describes the changes of a pond into another type of landform, like a meadow or grassland. The changes that a pond goes through can happen over a few years or over a long time. The number of plants in a pond changes so many times it's hard to keep up with. Sometimes it can take hundreds of years for a pond to change into grasslands. In the pond's young age, living plants and dead animals build-up at the bottom slowly. (1) In time plants to grow to the shore. The animals have seeds on their fur or feet that grow into plants. The wind also can blow seeds to the shore area. (2) Now small fishes, snails, mussels, caddis flies, mayflies, dragonflies find much food to live at this pond. Some come as eggs on bird's feet or other pond visitors. Adult insects travel from pond to pond. Turtles, mice and other large animals travel by feet. (3) Junk such as plants debris, leaves, mud and sludge gather at the bottom of the pond. (4) Sooner or later pondweed becomes abundant at the bottom, and the emergent plants grow out into the pond. The pond fills in and becomes part of the meadow or grassland around it. Back to the Pond

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