Natural Community Report January, 2002 for Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park

Lautzenheiser, Tom

To inform management decisions at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical. Natural communities are interacting assemblages of species and their environment. Inventorying and mapping natural communities on a site provides a rich representation of the diversity of species and ecological processes that occur there. Natural community maps are created through a combination of remote-sensing and field techniques, and incorporate the physical and biological characteristics of an area. Natural community maps may be useful to land managers because these maps depict site- to landscape-scale ecological variation. As an example, land managers may recognize rank certain communities as high priority, and may focus conservation or restoration efforts on these communities. Such high priority communities may be those that are rare on the site or in the region, or those that may contain rare species. Sixteen natural communities were identified during this inventory. Of the natural stands, which comprise 340 acres of the area of the Park, the following communities cover the most area: •136 acres of Hemlock-Northern Hardwood Forest • 57 acres of Northern Hardwood Forest • 55 acres of Hemlock Forest • 43 acres of Sugar Maple-White Ash-Jack-in-the-Pulpit Forest • 14 acres of Rich Northern Hardwood Forest • 8 acres of Red Maple-Black Ash Swamp • 6 acres of Red or Silver Maple-Green Ash Swamp Many of these communities are influenced by the bedrock that serves as their foundations. Much of the Park is underlain by a calcareous bedrock that contributes nutrients to the soil and vegetation in the area. This enrichment is reflected in the neutral to alkaline conditions, as well as in the diverse herbaceous vegetation observed in many communities.