Scrub and dwarf chestnut oaks dominate the shrub thicket, joined by a variety of interesting heath plants. From the forest flo or springs a profusion of lichens and wildflowers. The Long Island Pine Barrens also contains a diverse range of wetland communities, including marshes, heath bogs, red maple swamps and rare Atlantic white cedar swamps.
Wetland areas team with unusual plants, including several insectivorous species and over a dozen species of orchids. Animals in the Long Island Pine Barrens include over bird species, many of which are disappearing in the region; an outstanding population of butterflies and moths, including the threatened buck moth; and such threatened or endangered vertebrates as the eastern tiger salamander, eastern mud turtle and northern harrier hawk.
In fact, the Long Island Pine Barrens boasts the greatest diversity of plant and animal species anywhere in the state of New York. The Long Island Pine Barrens overlies the source of the greatest quantity of the purest drinking water on Long Island. Pine barrens typically occurs on level to gently sloping sandy outwash plains and sandy glacial lakeplains.
The community occasionally occurs on sandy riverine terraces and moderate to steeply sloping ice-contact landforms that are located adjacent to broad outwash plains or lakeplains. The level topography and absence of natural fire breaks facilitate the spread of wildfire, which advances rapidly up adjacent moraines and ice-contact features. Where pine barrens occurs on pitted outwash and rolling topography, cold air collects in the depressions and forms frost pockets. Historically, pine barrens, dry sand prairie, and dry northern forest often occurred as a shifting mosaic, with species composition and community structure varying with fire frequency and fire intensity.
The soil is primarily excessively drained, very strongly to strongly acid sand, and relatively infertile. Thin bands of finer textured soil loamy sand to sandy clay loam are often present near moraines or ice-contact landforms.
Such fine banding improves soil-water availability, resulting in more rapid tree growth and a faster rate of succession to forest. Frequent wildfire, in concert with drought, growing-season frosts, and low-nutrient soils, maintain open conditions in pine barrens. Fire allows the serotinous cones of jack pine to open and thereby facilitates seed dispersal. Fire is also essential in jack pine regeneration because it prepares the seedbed by exposing bare mineral soil, reducing competition from grasses, sedges, herbs, and woody vegetation, and increasing soil nutrient levels.
Jack pine typically dominates the open overstory. Red pine Pinus resinosa is often present, and widely scattered white pine P. Both red pine and white pine can form a sparse supercanopy above the scattered groves of jack pine.
Northern pin oak, black cherry Prunus serotina , and aspens Populus spp. Ground cover vegetation is characterized by a well developed, short shrub layer and numerous graminoid species.
Blueberry Vaccinium angustifolium , sweet-fern Comptonia peregrina , sand cherry Prunus pumila , prairie willow Salix humilis , and hazelnuts Corylus spp. Poverty grass Danthonia spicata , little bluestem Schizachyrium scoparium , and Pennsylvania sedge Carex pensylvanica are dominant herbaceous species across the range of this community.
Other characteristic herbaceous species include big bluestem Andropogon gerardii , hair grass Avenella flexuosa , prairie cinquefoil Drymocallis arguta , porcupine grass Hesperostipa spartea , June grass Koeleria macrantha , rough blazing star Liatris aspera , prairie heart-leaved aster Symphyotrichum oolentangiense , and birdfoot violet Viola pedata.
Bracken fern Pteridium aquilinum and reindeer lichen Cladina spp. For information about plant species, visit the Michigan Flora website. Pine barrens and surrounding dry sand prairie habitat support a rich diversity of invertebrates including numerous species of butterflies, skippers, grasshoppers, and locusts.
Fire is the single most significant factor in preserving the pine barrens landscape. Where remnants of pine barrens persist, the use of prescribed fire is an imperative management tool for maintaining an open canopy, promoting high levels of grass and forb diversity, deterring the encroachment of woody vegetation and invasive plants, and limiting the success of overstory dominants. When feasible, prescribed fire management for pine barrens should encompass other adjacent fire-dependent upland and wetland communities such as dry sand prairie, dry northern forest, dry-mesic northern forest, bog, poor fen, intermittent wetland, northern fen, and northern wet meadow.
Where rare animal species are a management concern, burning strategies should allow for ample refugia to facilitate effective post-burn recolonization. Degraded barrens that have been long deprived of fire and have converted to closed canopy forest or woodland may require mechanical thinning or girdling prior to implementation of prescribed fire.
Destructive timber exploitation of pines s and oaks s combined with post-logging slash fires likely destroyed or degraded many pine barrens. In addition, fire suppression policies instituted in the s resulted in the succession of many open pine barrens to closed canopy forests dominated by jack pine.
Many sites formerly occupied by pine barrens were also converted to pine plantations. The fragments of pine barrens that remain often lack the full complement of conifers; scattered red pine and white pine, which create a supercanopy, were widely harvested. In addition to simplified overstory structure, these communities are often depauperate in floristic diversity as the result of fire suppression, livestock grazing, off-road-vehicle activity, and the subsequent invasion of non-native species.
Monitoring and control efforts to detect and remove invasive species before they become widespread are critical to the long-term viability of pine barrens. By outcompeting native species, invasives alter vegetation structure, reduce species diversity, and disrupt ecological processes.
The following invasive species can be significant components of the herbaceous layer of degraded pine barrens: spotted knapweed Centaurea stoebe , hawkweeds Hieracium spp. As of this year, there are , acres within the Long Island Pine Barrens, protected from development.
But the Pine Barrens is more than just protected land. The region is mostly dominated by Pitch Pine, but there are also Black, Scarlet and White Oaks that share the canopy in a lot of places. And in the understory, you have scrub oaks and a variety of health plants blueberry, huckleberry, bearberry, etc. Lichens and wildflowers can also be found along the forest floor. Over a dozen species of orchids can be found in the Barrens. There are also three types of insectivorous plants found in the Pine Barrens — pitcher plants, sundews and bladderworts.
The Pine Barrens also contain a range of wetland communities — including marshes, heath bogs, red maple swamps, and rare Atlantic white cedar swamps. This ecosystem is dominated by dwarf Pitch Pines that are about 3 to 6 feet in height. These trees are dwarfed because of the extremely acidic and sandy soil in the area. The sandy soils allow little available nutrients and cause water to leach out very quickly. These trees are stunted, but thrive!
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