Bowls, Hollows and Ravine Networks

Rich forests, moist draws, ravines, toe slopes, hillside benches.

Moist draws, wooded ravines, enriched forests in bowls and hollows provide some of the most fertile settings in the region. Over 200,000 of these features occur, covering 5% of the ecoregion, although, like streams, these systems form interconnected networks and it can be hard to determine where one occurrence ends and another begins.
The lush patches of forest that develop in these settings are known colloquially as “rich northern hardwood forests,” “rich mesic forest,” “maple-ash-basswood forest” or “cove hardwoods” and they are often sought out by botanists for their unique flora. The fertile damp soils that develop in these shallow bowls are local repositories of nutrients and support a variety of nutrient-loving plants such as ginseng or Goldie's fern, and trees like basswood, white ash and sugar maple. Calcareous soils accentuate the fertility of rich hardwood forests and remarkable understories of maidenhair fern, trilliums and impatience may result. Seventy-eight percent of the inventoried rich hardwood forests occurred in this setting.

Key recommendations for cove forest and wooded ravines

We recommend that protection be established for 14 percent of these features in a set of 360 sites that contain a remarkable 1200 of our most critical occurrences. This goal is highly achievable as currently 76% of the critical examples identified in this portfolio are already protected in GAP 1 or 2 reserves. The final 24% may be a challenge, however, as they tend to occur in low elevation settings with richer soils.