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
