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

<i>Quercus garryana</i> Species of oak tree

Quercus garryana is an oak tree species of the Pacific Northwest, with a range stretching from southern California to southwestern British Columbia. It is commonly known as the Garry Oak, Oregon white oak or Oregon oak. It grows from sea level to an altitude of 690 feet in the northern part of its range, and from 980 to 5,900 ft in the south of the range in California. The eponymous Nicholas Garry was deputy governor of the Hudson's Bay Company.

<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

Primary succession is the beginning step of ecological succession after an extreme disturbance, which usually occurs in an environment devoid of vegetation and other organisms. These environments are typically lacking in soil, as disturbances like lava flow or retreating glaciers scour the environment clear of nutrients.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pawnee National Grassland</span> Area of protected federal lands in northeastern Colorado

Pawnee National Grassland is a United States National Grassland located in northeastern Colorado on the Colorado Eastern Plains. The grassland is located in the South Platte River basin in remote northern and extreme northeastern Weld County between Greeley and Sterling. It comprises two parcels totaling 193,060 acres (78,130 ha) largely between State Highway 14 and the Wyoming border. The larger eastern parcel lies adjacent to the borders of both Nebraska and Wyoming. It is administered in conjunction with the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest from the U.S. Forest Service office in Fort Collins, with a local ranger district office in Greeley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aspen parkland</span> Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands ecoregion of Canada and the United States

Aspen parkland refers to a very large area of transitional biome between prairie and boreal forest in two sections, namely the Peace River Country of northwestern Alberta crossing the border into British Columbia, and a much larger area stretching from central Alberta, all across central Saskatchewan to south central Manitoba and continuing into small parts of the US states of Minnesota and North Dakota. Aspen parkland consists of groves of aspen, poplar and spruce, interspersed with areas of prairie grasslands, also intersected by large stream and river valleys lined with aspen-spruce forests and dense shrubbery. This is the largest boreal-grassland transition zone in the world and is a zone of constant competition and tension as prairie and woodlands struggle to overtake each other within the parkland.

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

The Atlantic coastal pine barrens is a now rare temperate coniferous forest ecoregion of the Northeast United States distinguished by unique species and topographical features, generally nutrient-poor, often acidic soils and a pine tree distribution once controlled by frequent fires.

Rome Sand Plains is a 15,000-acre (61 km2) pine barrens about five miles (8.0 km) west of the city center of Rome in Oneida County in central New York. It consists of a mosaic of sand dunes rising about 50 feet (15 m) above low peat bogs that lie between the dunes. The barrens are covered with mixed northern hardwood forests, meadows, and wetlands. About 4,000 acres (16 km2) are protected in conservation preserves. Pine barrens are typical of seacoasts; the Rome Sand Plains is one of only a handful of inland pine barrens remaining in the United States. A second inland pine barrens, the Albany Pine Bush, is also found in New York, located north and west of state's capital Albany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pinelands National Reserve</span> National reserve that encompasses the New Jersey Pine Barrens

Pinelands National Reserve is a national reserve that encompasses the New Jersey Pine Barrens. The Pinelands is a unique location of historic villages and berry farms amid the vast oak-pine forests, extensive wetlands, and diverse species of plants and animals of the Atlantic coastal pine barrens ecoregion. It is protected by state and federal legislation through management by local, state, and federal governments and the private sector. The reserve contains Wharton State Forest, Brendan T. Byrne State Forest, Bass River State Forest, Penn State Forest, and Double Trouble State Park, which provide public recreation facilities. Established by Congress in 1978, it is one of the nation's first national reserves, established along with Ebey's Landing National Historical Reserve.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western Gulf coastal grasslands</span> Subtropical grassland ecoregion of Mexico and the United States

The Western Gulf coastal grasslands are a subtropical grassland ecoregion of the southern United States and northeastern Mexico. It is known in Louisiana as the "Cajun Prairie", Texas as "Coastal Prairie," and as the Tamaulipan pastizal in Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hammock (ecology)</span> Type of ecosystem in the southeastern United States

Hammock is a term used in the southeastern United States for stands of trees, usually hardwood, that form an ecological island in a contrasting ecosystem. Hammocks grow on elevated areas, often just a few inches high, surrounded by wetlands that are too wet to support them. The term hammock is also applied to stands of hardwood trees growing on slopes between wetlands and drier uplands supporting a mixed or coniferous forest. Types of hammocks found in the United States include tropical hardwood hammocks, temperate hardwood hammocks, and maritime or coastal hammocks. Hammocks are also often classified as hydric, mesic or xeric. The types are not exclusive, but often grade into each other.

The Plymouth Pinelands, also known as the Massachusetts Coastal Pine Barrens, is an ecoregion located in Massachusetts in the United States. It is a part of the Atlantic coastal pine barrens.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Florida scrub</span> Ecoregion of Florida, United States

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eastern woodlands of the United States</span>

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<i>Corema conradii</i> Species of flowering plant

Corema conradii is a species of flowering plant in the heath family known by the common name broom crowberry. It is native to eastern North America, where it has a disjunct distribution, occurring intermittently from Nova Scotia to Massachusetts, in the Shawangunk Mountains of New York, and in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Studies indicate that the plant might be a hybrid between ancestral populations of Corema album and Ceratiola.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interior Low Plateaus</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southeastern conifer forests</span> Temperate coniferous forests ecoregion of the United States

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References

  1. Brown, Hutch (Summer 2000). "Wildland Burning by American Indians in Virginia". Fire Management Today. 60 (3). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service: 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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