Ecoregions

BenAllgood

Well-Known Member
Ecoregions are pretty neat to look into. My property, from what I've found so far, is in the Oak-Hickory forest ecoregion with areas of scatter openings and bottoms of more shade tolerant species. It looks like that habitat type is losing ground rather quickly. It's turning more into a maple/beech dominated area where forest still happens to be on the landscape. It seems the maples and beeches are taking over due to them being more shade tolerant species.

I'd encourage people to google their ecoregion and see what their land may be used to look like.

Look for Level III and IV ecoregions to get more specific on your local area.
 
Im in the northeast, specifically where I am located the various forest types are in abundance specifically the one you mentioned, clearly each state is different


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Essentially the same things happens with forests that happens with food plots. Desirable species are removed and unwanted species are left to dominate.

In a food plot the deer and other animals eat the clover, chicory and other desirable plants, but the undesirable ones such as grasses are not touched and therefore gain ground. Oaks are the most desirable species for habitat, but also the ones cut first when people do logging. Sweet Gum, Soft Maples, Sycamores and others that have no wildlife value (and no timber value) are just left and continue to build up the seedbank.

It's time to walk to the beat of a different drummer...…………….
 
Essentially the same things happens with forests that happens with food plots. Desirable species are removed and unwanted species are left to dominate.

In a food plot the deer and other animals eat the clover, chicory and other desirable plants, but the undesirable ones such as grasses are not touched and therefore gain ground. Oaks are the most desirable species for habitat, but also the ones cut first when people do logging. Sweet Gum, Soft Maples, Sycamores and others that have no wildlife value (and no timber value) are just left and continue to build up the seedbank.

It's time to walk to the beat of a different drummer...…………….

I’ve been hearing that different drummer for years Native. On both my places I have cut the pine and the gums, elm, etc. and saved the oaks for the most part. I value white oak, red oak, willow oak, and post oak, in that order. I do sometimes remove some oaks if they’re growing too close to each other. That’s just my amateurish thinking but in 25 years I can’t see that it has hurt anything.

In 2011, we had a terrible drought and I lost a bunch of very nice white oaks on my home place. I lost a handfull on my other place because it was a wet natured property. Where I live is pretty high for East Texas, well drained, and the white oaks didn’t get enough to drink. The only upside to that, and it’s hard to think of it in that light, was that when the trees died, that big crown didn’t shade the little stuff out anymore and some browse got a chance to grow.
 
This is all very interesting to me. I constantly wonder “what this land looked like 100 years ago.” However I’m surprised to see that much of the land I’ve hunted on seems to be pretty consistent with the ecoregion descriptions.

The spot I’ve hunted most of my life has been owned by a hardwood timber company. The surrounding soil region grows cherrybark and other red oak varieties exceptionally well and this company owned hundreds of thousands of similar bluff country and adjacent bottomland hardwoodlands for decades. I believe (but don’t really know for sure) that much of the bluff land where we hunt was actually cleared for farming 100 years ago. I’d love to know if that was true.

Anyway, our leased land seems to have been managed really well. They come in about every 10 years and cut older age class trees and leave a good crop. Best I can tell, it could use some TSI to rid it of a high hornbeam component that, I believe, will one day impact oak regeneration if left unchecked. I’d venture to guess that they harvest on the order of $1k/ac of timber at each thinning. It is productive timberland.

This land is in a soil region that is highly highly erodible. When the Corps of Engineers started hastening MS River flow to thwart silting, it caused tremendous head cutting along tributaries of the lower MS River. You can see where lazy hollows and streams once existed, the middle of which is now home to a 80-ft deep canyon. At its start the canyon is a mere ditch that inches its way up the holler about 10-20 ft per year. This phenomenon is depressing, as it can not be undone in the way that poor timber, vegetation management can be.

I guess you take the good with the bad.

The land I own is in an adjacent ecoregion, known for slightly lesser soil quality and timber production. There pine plantations are more common because, well, it doesn’t grow high quality hardwoods quite so good. I’m more certain my land was once open farmland. Again, though, the species makeup is pretty consistent with the ecoregion description.

I even surmise that the timber industry in this area has caused the timber quality to improve over what the first settlers found. The oldest, largest crowned oaks on these places do not make a valuable log. The ecoregion description mentions beech and magnolia as having been common in certain old growth areas. Forests dominated by these species today are considered overmature, unmanaged, and generally less conducive to wildlife.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top