Western Great Lakes Forests
| Western Great Lakes forests | |
|---|---|
|
|
 |
|
| Ecology | |
| Biome | Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests |
| Borders | Central Canadian Shield forests, Northern tall grasslands, Upper Midwest forest-savanna transition and Southern Great Lakes forests |
| Bird species | |
| Mammal species | |
| Geography | |
| Area | 274,000 km2 (106,000 sq mi) |
| Countries | United States and Canada |
| States/Provinces | Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ontario and Manitoba |
The Western Great Lakes forests is a terrestrial ecoregion as defined by the World Wildlife Fund. It is within the Temperate Broadleaf and Mixed Forests ecozone of North America, in the United States' states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba.
The Western Great Lakes forests, in large part, lie in the northwestern Great Lakes Basin near the shores of Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, including the entire Upper peninsula of Michigan and large parts of Northern Wisconsin, around Lake Superior into much of northern Minnesota and a smaller section into Canada. In the west, the ecoregion surrounds the lakes and rivers that divide Minnesota from Ontario, including Lake of the woods and Rainy River, and it extends near the Winnipeg River into southeastern Manitoba
This region has warm summers and cold, snowy winters. This region is generally similar in climate and condition to the Eastern forest-boreal transition to its east, except that it is generally somewhat drier (the prevailing winds blow west to east and drier air from the plains comes here first before it picks up moisture over the lakes) and, especially in its southern and central areas, its soil is much thicker and less acidic, which makes for more varied vegetation.
This ecoregion is a transition area between the taiga (Boreal forest) to the north and the temperate deciduous forest and tallgrass prairie to the south and west and thus contains a variety of habitats including northern coniferous forests, northern hardwood forest, boreal hardwood-conifer forest, swamp forest, and peatland, in addition to freshwater marshes, bogs, fens, and hardwood river basins and conifer swamps, and large hardwood and conifer stands. Trees of the woodland include white pine and red pine (Pinus resinosa) with paper birch and aspen, and jack pine forests, red pine, oak (Quercus spp.), and hazel (Corylus cornuta). "Common species of the northern hardwoods include sugar maple (Acer saccharum), red maple (Acer rubrum), American beech (Fagus grandifolia), hop hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana), basswood (Tilia americana), yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis) and eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis)" and Northern pin oak (Quercus ellipsoidalis).
...
Wikipedia