LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk Fall 2014

LOCALadk Magazine

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upland soils • • • bedrock alluvium peat sphagnu m Spring Pond Middle Saranac Lake St. Regis River Osgood River natural history. It also, for some of us, is a key to understanding the future of these landscapes: climate change is changing the processes that maintain the landscapes, and, as these processes change, the landscape will change. Either way, landscape patterns are important. I am engaged in a project to document them across the northern forest region, and will be sharing some of our imagery and ideas with LOCAL adk readers. Here, to start off with, are some characteristic Adirondack ones. The diagrams show how they are constructed, and the pictures some Taken as a geographic whole, the Adirondack are a large dome, part mountainous and part rolling, created over a hundred million years ago when a hot spot passed under them on its way from Canada to Africa. Viewed ecologically, they are something quite different: a mosaic of distinct landscapes, each with characteristic biological and physical patterns, and each sustained by characteristic processes. The study of these patterns —why, say, the conifers in the photo above become stunted as they approach the Osgood, or why the St. Regis has so many bends and ponds—is a key to understanding Adirondack An Introduction to Adirondack Ecology By Jerry Jenkins, Northern Forest Atlas Project LOCALadk 60 Fall 2014

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