Lake Erie North Shore Watershed Plan - Niagara Peninsula ...

LAKE ERIE NORTH SHORE WATERSHED PLAN
Empire Beach Backshore Forest Basin Life Science ANSI
This provincially significant Area of Natural and Scientific Interest has also been
designated as a Provincially Significant coastal Wetland. The shallow basin is a clay
covered limestone plain resulting in a poorly drained area which is separated from Lake
Erie‟s shoreline by a small sand dune complex which hampers drainage resulting in a
low lying swampy area. According to Macdonald (1990b) the basin itself includes a
series of parallel, low sand ridges which barely rise through the organic soils of the
wetland. The vegetation represents a number of Lake Erie coastal communities, of
particular importance according Macdonald (1990b), is the temperate element of the
deciduous and mixed lowland forests of the swamp basin. They present intermediate to
sub-mature growths of silver maple, black ash, yellow birch, eastern hemlock and red
ash. In the wetland basin, deciduous swamps of silver maple, white elm and red ash
dominate; the sand dune vegetation is dominated by upland deciduous forest of silver
maple, american beach and northern red oak with a well developed shrub and herb flora
understory; and the forested vegetation along northern and eastern peripheral areas are
generally disturbed by drainage, clearing and cutting, although in the north-eastern
section, the “forest cover appears to have succeeded from past selective cutting,
resulting in a very eclectic, but notably rich, complement in all the strata (Macdonald
1990)”.
Humberstone Muck Basin Swamp Forest Life Science ANSI
The provincially significant Humberstone Muck Basin Swamp Forest straddles the
subwatershed boundaries of Black Creek and
Beaver Dam Creek; therefore only a portion of
this unique natural heritage feature falls within
the Lake Erie North Shore study area. The
following description has been provided by
Macdonald (1980): “The landform of this peat
and muck filled basin adjacent to the
Onondaga Escarpment is one of only three
such occurrences in the Haldimand Clay Plain.
The extent, degree of development, diversity
and species richness of the community
patterns, particularly those swamp forests and
scrublands in the southern half, are rarely
occurrant elsewhere in the region”. Vegetation
communities include for example, a lowland
deciduous forest which dominates the basin;
deciduous swamp forests and scrubland. On
the south-eastern fringe, the transition onto the
Onondaga Escarpment rockland supports a
forest dominated by red maple, bur and pin oak
and shagbark hickory while the corresponding
slope on the western side consists of deeper clay soils that support a younger
successional mixture of forest patterns (Macdonald 1980).
Humberstone Quarry (Port Colborne Quarry) Earth Science ANSI
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