Beaver Dams
The trail begins to leave the pond behind, following the creek that drains from the bog and runs down the valley, joining the Susquehanna. If you look to the left, you can see several dams built by the beavers, created smaller ponds and raising the water levels of Emmons Pond itself.
The dams help keep the pond's outflow to a minimum, which is another characteristic of kettle hole bogs. Most of the water coming in is rainfall, and the low outflow rate keeps the water still and anaerobic.
From Donna: "Beavers have been a part of Emmons bog for a long time. You can see some really big old dead trees standing in the middle of the bog. They reflect a time when the level of the pond was really low. These trees were able to grow next to the pond, put in roots, mature to a good size, and then beavers moved in, the water rose, and the trees died."
"After that, the beavers were probably hunted out and the water level dropped back down again. Beavers were part of New York for years and years and years. Native Americans really didn’t kill many of them for fur or any other use so they were pretty widespread, but when beaver hats and fur coats became popular, they were pretty much hunted to extinction in this area. It's really only been in the last 50 years that beaver levels, like deer levels, have gone up. The pond's water levels go up and down with the coming and going of the beavers. The current beaver family has upped the water level probably more than a meter, almost two meters, which is a lot of water added to the bog.
QR content provided courtesy of A.J. Read Science Discovery Center. Emmons Bog Pond is managed by The Nature Conservancy. Learn more at nature.org.