Description

The largest forested upland area remaining between the Niagara Escarpment and Hamilton. It represents a relatively undisturbed and moderately high diversity of forest types on an ancient shoreline terrace (Eagles & Beechey, 1985).

Vegetation

The forest is mainly red oak-white oak with red maple, sugar maple. Shagbark hickory-beech and basswood and sugar maple-beech. Also included are hawthorn savanna, young ash-shagbark hickory-sugar maple woods and dogwood-cattail lowland (Hanna, 1984 in Eagles & Beechey, 1985).

This area (ESA) has a high diversity of biological communities. In the north there are cultivated fields; open fields of grasses, clover and mustard; a small ravine with an intermittent stream; an unusual lowland floodplain with thickets of red-osier dogwood, cattails, elecampane, and wild raspberry; a mature oak-maple forest; a younger denser forest of ash, hickory and maple; and large scrublands of apple and hawthorn. N the south, there may be found mature maple-beech stands, a small bog and an extensive abandoned orchard, in addition to mature oak, maple, hickory forest (Eagles & Beechey, 1985).

Representation

The glacial Lake Iroquois shoreline represents a distinctive and unusual landform within Ontario. As the north shore of Lake Ontario urbanizes, much of this landform is being obscured by development or destroyed (Eagles & Beechey, 1985).

Landform

Terrace upland woods lying along post glacial Lake Iroquois shoreline characterize this site (Hanna, 1984 in Eagles & Beechey, 1985).

References

• Allen, G.M., P.F.J. Eagles and S.D. Price (eds.) 1990. Conserving Carolinian Canada: Conservation Biology in the Deciduous Forest Region. University of Waterloo Press, Waterloo. 346 pp.


• Eagles, P.F.J. and T.J. Beechey (eds.) 1985. Critical Unprotected Natural Areas in the Carolinian Life Zone of Canada. Final Report, Identification Subcommittee, Carolinian Canada. The Nature Conservancy of Canada, The Ontario Heritage Foundation and World Wildlife Fund (Canada). 400 pp.


• Hanna, R. 1984. Life Science Areas of Natural and Scientific Interest in Site District 7-4: A Review And Assessment of Significant Natural Areas in Site District 7-4. OMNR, Parks and Recreational Areas Section, Central Region, Richmond Hill. SR OFER 8404. vii + 69 pp. + folded map, illus.

© Natural Heritage Information Centre, 1998

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