Drone photograph of Cedarburg Bog showing Cullen Meurer and Adam Schmidt conducting field work from the boardwalk.
The Cedarburg Bog, a UW-Milwaukee field site, is a 2,500-acre wetland complex and one of the most diverse wetlands in southern Wisconsin. The southernmost string bog in North America supports a wide variety of plants and animals, including the Hine’s emerald dragonfly, a federally endangered species. The diversity and uniqueness of the Cedarburg bog is mainly driven by groundwater, unlike a true bog which is acidic and dependent on rainwater, the Cedarburg Bog has a near neutral pH, resulting from the region’s calcareous groundwater. To better understand groundwater flow in the bog, piezometers were installed throughout the area. These wells give important information on how groundwater is interacting with the bog but give little information on vertical flow in the region’s aquifers and between geologic units. The objective of this research project is to determine the magnitude and direction of vertical groundwater flow in the Cedarburg Bog region.