Pine barrens

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View north from a fire tower on Apple Pie Hill, the highest point in the New Jersey Pine Barrens 2014-08-29 11 51 25 View north-northeast from the fire tower on Apple Pie Hill in Wharton State Forest, Tabernacle Township, New Jersey.JPG
View north from a fire tower on Apple Pie Hill, the highest point in the New Jersey Pine Barrens

Pine barrens, pine plains, sand plains, or pineland areas occur throughout the U.S. from Florida to Maine (see Atlantic coastal pine barrens) as well as the Midwest, West, and Canada and parts of Eurasia. Perhaps the most well known pine-barrens area to North Americans is the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Pine barrens are generally pine forests in otherwise "barren" and agriculturally challenging areas. Such pine forests often occur on dry, acidic, infertile soils, and also include grasses, forbs, and low shrubs. The most extensive pine barrens occur in large areas of sandy glacial deposits (including outwash plains), lakebeds, and outwash terraces along rivers.

Contents

Description

Botany

The most common trees are the jack pine, red pine, pitch pine, blackjack oak, and scrub oak; a scattering of larger oaks is not unusual. The understory includes grasses, sedges, and forbs, many of them common in dry prairies, and rare plants such as the sand-plain gerardia ( Agalinis acuta ). Plants of the heath family, such as blueberries and bearberry, and shrubs, such as prairie willow and hazel, are common. These species have adaptations that permit them to survive or regenerate well after fire.

Fauna

Pine barrens support a number of rare species, including Lepidoptera such as the Karner blue butterfly (Plebejus melissa samuelis) and the barrens buck moth (Hemileuca maia).

Fire ecology

The American Indians used fire to maintain such areas as rangeland. [1] Suppression of wildfires has allowed larger climax forest vegetation to take over in most one-time barrens.[ citation needed ] Barrens are dependent on fire to prevent invasion by less fire-tolerant species. In the absence of fire, barrens will proceed through successional stages from pine forest to a larger climax forest, such as oak-hickory forest. [2] :118–20 However, temperatures in a white pine forest on Long Island were high enough to destroy the pine cones which led to a slow recovery of the pine forest that varied depending on the availability of seedlings and the spatial variability in the conditions in the soil encountered by the seedlings. [3] [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">New Jersey Pine Barrens</span> Coastal pine barrens in southern New Jersey, United States

The New Jersey Pine Barrens, also known as the Pinelands or simply the Pines, is the largest remaining example of the Atlantic coastal pine barrens ecosystem, stretching across more than seven counties of New Jersey. Two other large, contiguous examples of this ecosystem remain in the northeastern United States: the Long Island Central Pine Barrens and the Massachusetts Coastal Pine Barrens. The name pine barrens refers to the area's sandy, acidic, nutrient-poor soil. Although European settlers could not cultivate their familiar crops there, the unique ecology of the Pine Barrens supports a diverse spectrum of plant life, including orchids and carnivorous plants. The area is also notable for its populations of rare pygmy pitch pines and other plant species that depend on the frequent fires of the Pine Barrens to reproduce. The sand that composes much of the area's soil is referred to by the locals as sugar sand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rangeland</span> Biomes which can be grazed by animals or livestock (grasslands, woodlands, prairies, etc)

Rangelands are grasslands, shrublands, woodlands, wetlands, and deserts that are grazed by domestic livestock or wild animals. Types of rangelands include tallgrass and shortgrass prairies, desert grasslands and shrublands, woodlands, savannas, chaparrals, steppes, and tundras. Rangelands do not include forests lacking grazable understory vegetation, barren desert, farmland, or land covered by solid rock, concrete and/or glaciers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Primary succession</span> Gradual growth and change of an ecosystem on new substrate

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atlantic coastal pine barrens</span> Temperate coniferous forest ecoregion of Northeast United States

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References

  1. Brown, Hutch (Summer 2000). "Wildland Burning by American Indians in Virginia". Fire Management Today. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 60 (3): 30.
  2. McPhee, John (1968). The Pine Barrens . Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. p.  118. ISBN   978-0-374-51442-6.
  3. Marcazzo, Regina (2000-08-20). "From Pines' Ashes, a Different Landscape". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-07-24.
  4. Landis, R. Matthew; Gurevitch, Jessica; Fox, Gordon A.; Fang, Wei; Taub, Daniel R. (2005). "Variation in recruitment and early demography in Pinus rigida following crown fire in the pine barrens of Long Island, New York". Journal of Ecology. 93 (3): 607–617. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2005.00996.x . ISSN   1365-2745. S2CID   85748554.

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