Flowing water, flashing sunlight, Woods becoming a Wetland

Floating snails, flying tiger swallowtails, fat polywogs. Sunday morning I checked the southern Woods after recent inch and a quarter of rain (past 3 days) and two and a half inches (over past five days), an unusually wet April and wet spring. Water's been standing in the southwestern portion of the Woods for the past four months. The tree species there have variable ability to tolerate flooding and drowned roots. Willow, box elder and cottonwood can handle this best. Elm, ash, sugar berry, persimmon, chittamwood, not so well. Bur oaks don't like drowned roots. This summer the southwest corner of the Woods will dry completely. But the longer water covers the roots of the trees, the more stress (and mortality) of trees there will be. The water comes mostly from OU Lloyd Noble Ctr parking area, roughly the same size as Oliver's Woods. Until 2000 the parking area was gravel and rain there percolated into the water table. In 2000 the parking lot was paved with asphalt. The water flashes off the asphalt, into the western drain and culvert under Hwy 9, and into the Woods. Quick rains flush too much water down the Wash into the Woods, water breaches the western bank levee and flows across the south central Woods, 'upstream' through the old beaver dam and then sits in the southwestern Woods until it can all drain south into the Canadian River. Draining can take weeks to months.
Along the south boundary fence, I came to the center point and the exit flow of water from the Woods. From there eastward the water was rippling and sparkling in the bright sunlight. I checked the flow upstream to the old beaver dam and beyond, all along the Main Southwest trail.. all under water.
Hundreds of fat polywogs wriggled ahead of me. They'll metamorphose soon to young frogs. They must have been feasting on mosquito larvae (and algae). I was not bothered by one mosquito. I think I saw a few minnows too.. maybe opportunistic migrants from the overflowing NW Pond's cattails, foraging into the drowned Woods. The most common animals on the move were thousands of snails floating individually down stream. They looked like little bits of old charcoal. Each had its own bubble keeping it up at the surface.
If a warming climate keeps more water in the atmosphere, with heavier spring rains in central Oklahoma, these shallow floods will continue and over time the Woods will become a wetland with standing snags of old drowned trees.