A report on the identification and mapping of the Native Plant Communities at the Cloquet Forestry Center

Abstract

The Minnesota Ecological Classification System (ECS) is used to define plant communities within the National Heirarchical Classification of Ecological Units using known land-use history and present biotic and abiotic ecosystem components. This report describes the process and results of how the ECS was used to identify and delineate potential Native Plant Communities (NPCs) across the landbase of the University of Minnesota Cloquet Forestry Center (CFC).

All NPCs were located in the Northern Superior Uplands section on the Brimson Sand Plain landtype association. Eight ecological systems, all from the northern floristic region, and 16 native plant community classes were identified. The ecological systems identified were acid peatlands (AP), fire dependent forest/woodlands (FD), floodplain forests (FF), mesic hardwood forest (MH), open rich peatlands (OP), wet forests (WF), and wet meadows (WM). Of the 3391 total acres assessed, upland FD and MH forests covered 68% and lowland systems covered 32%. The FDn33 Northern Dry-Mesi Mixed Woodland NPC class occupied 44% of the total CFC landbase. The shapefile developed as part of this work is available upon request.