Ecoregions

BenAllgood

5 year old buck +
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.
 
What you are writing about is pretty common as forest management has changed over time. People got this idea in their head that big tall shade trees where better....and as such trees like maple and beech thrived in the understory because they can do well in the shade. Then once those big oaks and hickories are cut then the less desirable maple and beech are left and the shade from them just promote more beech and maple. The oak and hickories can't survive in that environment and thus fade away. This "high grading" of timber has been a big problem for a long time....people only wanted to take the good stuff. The only really good way to combat this is thru clear cutting and re-planting. Which again....nobody likes to see or hear. You can do some selective harvest of the maple and beech IF you have some oaks trying to push thru. The recent value of hard maple has helped in this practice, while just a few decades ago all maple was essentially considered a weed tree as far as timber was concerned.
 
What you are writing about is pretty common as forest management has changed over time. People got this idea in their head that big tall shade trees where better....and as such trees like maple and beech thrived in the understory because they can do well in the shade. Then once those big oaks and hickories are cut then the less desirable maple and beech are left and the shade from them just promote more beech and maple. The oak and hickories can't survive in that environment and thus fade away. This "high grading" of timber has been a big problem for a long time....people only wanted to take the good stuff. The only really good way to combat this is thru clear cutting and re-planting. Which again....nobody likes to see or hear. You can do some selective harvest of the maple and beech IF you have some oaks trying to push thru. The recent value of hard maple has helped in this practice, while just a few decades ago all maple was essentially considered a weed tree as far as timber was concerned.
Fortunately, I have enough oaks and hickories left so that I don't have to clearcut. I can release those that are there to allow the baby sun loving oaks and hickories to start coming in. As part of my forest management plan, I'll get rid of a lot of the maples and beeches except in the bottoms where they should be. As part of that, I'll have to first get rid of a lot of the exotic species that never should have been there. It will be fun to see the progression back to how it was.
 
My area was tall grass prairie and oak Savanna. I believe it is the rarest and most endangered ecoregion on earth. An open grown burr oak is truly a thing of beauty. Just in the last decade the state forestry has been converting the south facing hillsides back to dry bluff prairies and oak savannas.
 
My parent’s place is in the blackland prairie region, with a very small portion of oak savannah.


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