Existing comment:
Pumpkin Ash Trail
Environmental Preservation:
The Pumpkin Ash Trail takes you on a journey through time. In it, you see different stages of a forest growing from cleared land.
When you walk the Pumpkin Ash Trail, you will enter four different habitats. Each is important. Different plants and animals rely on each of them.
You begin in the Forest habitat. Once this land was cleared and farmed, but forest has grown on it again in the last 50 years.
Next you will see the Lowland Forest/Riparian Forest habitat. This habitat has forested areas along the river.
Next you see the Wetland. The Wetland has some areas with nearly constant water, and other areas that are dry sometimes and wet at other times. The water affects that grows in each place.
Finally, you will enter the Grassland. You will notice smaller trees there. That's because it was cleared land until the 1990s, when it was allowed to grow up naturally again.
Ecological Succession:
As time progresses, the plants and animals in a particular habitat will change. Some may become more prevalent, while others become less so. Scientists call this process, by which one species displaces another, ecological succession.
Walking through the Pumpkin Ash Trail, you will see the ecological succession in reverse. The first habitat, forest, is a formerly cleared agricultural area where trees have grown for more than 50 years. There you will see trees like oak and hickory common to older forests. In the grassland area, cleared for agriculture until the 1990s, you will see smaller trees. These sweetgums, tulip poplars, and cedar trees are typical of newer forests. |