Michigan Nature Monday: Floodplain Forests

In southern Lower Michigan, the populated landscapes of farms, homes, and towns create predictable, right-angle patterns of human settlement when viewed from above.  But winding across and through those straight-line grids, meandering corridors trace the paths of streams and rivers.

These corridors often harbor something really important, a dynamic natural community known as a floodplain forest. Floodplain forests are a vital part of Michigan’s natural heritage. Periodic flooding, scouring, erosion and sediment deposition follow the rise and fall of water levels creating diverse microhabitats that are used by a variety of wildlife.

Land meets water in a floodplain forest. When that stream or river tops its banks, it reshapes the bottom lands with tree falls, migrating river channels, new sediment deposits or erosional scour. These actions create fluvial landforms such as natural levees, backswamps, oxbow ponds, and terraces – all associated with a particular type of vegetation.

The Thornapple River flows along the banks of MNA’s Thornapple Lake Nature Sanctuary as it empties into Thornapple Lake.

The flowing waters help the soils thaw earlier in the spring, meaning these are often the places where the first wildflowers bloom. Insects, invertebrates, reptiles, and amphibians appear almost simultaneously to take advantage of the food sources provided by these wildflowers. “These forests are often very important stopover or even nesting sites for declining neotropical migratory birds as well.” “Often they are the last forested strongholds in a lot of agriculturally-dominated landscapes and are therefore valuable for a variety of plants and animals.”

Threats to these impressive habitats are an all too familiar list – invasive plants and animals, hydrological modifications (levees, impoundments, channelization, dams), including those brought by climate change, habitat loss due to industrial, residential and agricultural fragmentation, and incompatible timber management. For those reasons, floodplain forests are both globally and state-ranked as vulnerable.

Copperbelly watersnakes are one rare species that use floodplain forests and other adjacent habitats. Photo courtesy Michigan Natural Features Inventory.

For sometimes being no more than a narrow, green edge along a river, the magnitude of floodplain forest benefits outweigh their seemingly limited size. Besides important habitat, they play a critical function in Michigan’s fight against climate change. When water flows across the land to a river, the floodplain forest serves as a buffer, absorbing both the quantity and the energy of that flow while filtering pollutants. Floodplain forests therefore help to protect the water quality in many of Michigan’s watersheds.

Michigan Nature Monday: Michigan’s Many Water Resources

Michigan is well-known as the “Great Lakes State” but there is much more to the state’s freshwater ecosystem than the massive inland freshwater seas that garner all the attention. There is a true “underdog” in Michigan’s freshwater systems—groundwater.

In honor of National Groundwater Awareness Week (March 5-11, 2023), the Michigan Nature Association is proud to explore a vital component of Michigan’s groundwater system, fens, written by MNA volunteer Zoë Goodrow.

What is a fen?

When the final glaciers in Michigan retreated north about 8,000-12,000 years ago, they shaped landforms that eventually became the wetlands we see today. Fens are among the rarest types of wetlands – more specifically, peatlands – found in Michigan. What differentiates fens from other wetlands is their hydrology.

Fens are fed by a continuous flow of groundwater that filters through nutrient-rich layers of sediment, like limestone, resulting in an ecosystem rich in calcium and magnesium. The steady supply of groundwater into fens means that fen soils remain saturated throughout the year. This causes a reduced abundance of bacteria that break down plant materials (compared to other wetlands), resulting in a buildup of decayed plant debris – also known as peat.

Rare species in fens

Fens have 500 times more rare plant and animal species than the average acre of land in Michigan. They support nearly 60 rare species and are the Michigan equivalent of rainforests in terms of relative biodiversity. Typical plant species that are unique to fens across Michigan include sphagnum mosses, white lady slipper, fringed gentian, edible valerian, and carnivorous plants including sundews and pitcher plants. Rare animals that habituate fens include the yellow rail, Mitchell’s satyr, and eastern massasauga rattlesnake. Fens are extremely fragile and sensitive systems that are already being impacted by climate change, which does not bode well for the rare species that are endemic to fen ecosystems. Because of this, and their significance to Michigan’s biodiversity, it is important to know the guidelines for minimizing disturbance before you visit one.

Types of Michigan fens

Michigan is home to many types of fens, including the northern, prairie, patterned, and coastal fens. These different fens are characterized by the natural processes that formed them and the climatic conditions of the regions they reside in.

Prairie fen photo by Dave Cuthrell.

Northern fens are found in the Upper Peninsula and the northern half of the Lower Peninsula. They occur where a glacial outwash meets a more textured glacial feature like a kettle lake or an end moraine.

Prairie fens, located in the southern half of the Lower Peninsula, occur in former oak-savanna prairies. As their name suggests, they are dominated by a mix of prairie and wetland sedges, grasses, and forbs. These fens were formed via the same glacial processes as northern fens.

Patterned fens, also known as string bogs, also occur in the Upper Peninsula. What differentiates these fens from northern fens is that they are a series of alternating ridges and hollows, oriented parallel to the contours of the land. The natural processes responsible for forming these unique systems are still unknown. While there are several proposed hypotheses – researchers agree that an essential factor is the direction of water movement, as the ridges and hollows are consistently oriented perpendicular to the flow of groundwater. (See more on patterned fens with MNA’s Fox River Wetlands in the video linked below)

Click on the image above to watch “The Fox and the Fen”. Photo by Jason Whalen, Fauna Creative.

Coastal fens occur along Lake Michigan and Lake Huron in the Upper Peninsula and northern Lower Peninsula. The natural processes that formed them are inextricably linked to those of the Great Lakes. The water tables that influence these systems are subjected to seasonal and multi-year lake level fluctuations, so vegetation in coastal fens changes quickly when water levels change.

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To experience a fen habitat first-hand, consider visiting MNA’s Lefglen Nature Sanctuary in Jackson County. The sanctuary is home to a prairie fen and a natural flowing well visible from the south trail. Visit our online sanctuary map for directions and more information.

Michigan Nature Monday: Poweshiek skipperling

One of the rarest butterflies, the Poweshiek skipperling, is truly on the brink of extinction. Once abundant in the tall prairie grasslands and the prairie fens of several states and provinces in the upper Midwest, the tiny butterfly is now found only in a handful of sites in Manitoba and northern Oakland County, including an MNA nature sanctuary. Loss of habitat and other factors contributed to a decades-long—and now a relatively recent and rapid—population decline that has scientists scratching their heads and worried about what their disappearance may mean for other pollinators.

The globally endangered Poweshiek is now so rare that only 100 individual butterflies were counted in a 2021 census. Recovery plans—aided by an international partnership that includes MNA—call for captive breeding efforts to headstart individuals and increase survival to adulthood in order to build a reserve population that can be reintroduced to the wild. The Minnesota Zoo, John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan State University’s Haddad Lab, and the Michigan Nature Association are specifically collaborating within the Poweshiek Skipperling International Partnership to annually produce more individuals for wild releases in 2022 and beyond in what is known as ex situ or “offsite” conservation.

Poweshiek skipperling photo by Cale Nordmeyer, Minnesota Zoo

MNA is proud to protect habitat critical for the Poweshiek skipperling’s survival, and to be part of the important partnership that is working to save this species from extinction. We look forward to continuing participation in this partnership effort to increase the Poweshiek skipperling population in the wild in the coming years.

Learn more about our conservation work and how you can contribute at michigannature.org.

Michigan’s Winter Wonders: Green Frog

Winter weather has arrived in most parts of Michigan by now, bringing dread for some, and excitement for others. But have you ever wondered what’s happening under the snow? Many of Michigan’s reptiles and amphibians search for tunnels or other underground cavities to wait out the cold winter temperatures. Still others might remain underwater, remarkably surviving the long winter months with little to no oxygen!

Such is the case with the Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans), one of Michigan’s most abundant frog species. These semi-aquatic amphibians spend their winters hibernating at the bottom of permanent pools and rivers, “breathing” in oxygen through their skin, occasionally nestled among piles of leaf litter that give off some amount of heat as they decompose, and sometimes can be seen swimming before the water has frozen over, or through clear ice. *A common misconception of hibernating animals is that they spend the entire time ‘sleeping’, when in fact hibernation is rather a period of reduced activity.

A green frog rests on a rock at MNA’s Joan Rodman Memorial Nature Sanctuary. Photo by Jodi Louth.

So, why spend the winter underwater rather than on land? Other frogs in Michigan like the wood frog, spring peeper, as well as toads, hibernate in tunnels and under leaf piles. These frogs are able to survive the freezing temperatures because they produce excess glucose which helps prevent freezing of the cells in their bodies, acting as a sort of antifreeze. Green frogs on the other hand, are not able to function in this way, and so they must stay in above-freezing temperatures through the winter.

Adequate winter habitat for these species is a critical part of ensuring their survival to the next season, and threats to that habitat exist – even as the snow flies! For many of us, fall is a time for “cleaning up”, for raking up all the leaves that have fallen (and jumping in the pile), then bagging them up and shipping them off to a community dump site. But this practice robs our yards and natural areas of needed habitat, not only for the insects that overwinter in leaf piles like caterpillars and firefly larvae, but also for the many reptiles and amphibians that call our state home. The leaves provide a “blanket” between the ground and the snow, they provide heat as they decompose in place which also returns essential nutrients to the soil.

There are so many benefits for Michigan nature from leaving the leaves, so skip the fall “cleanup” and enjoy reap the rewards come springtime. Learn more about Michigan’s many reptiles and amphibians, and their conservation needs, with Herpetological Resource & Management at herprman.com, and learn more about the benefits of leaving leaves, visit healthyyards.org or leaveleavesalone.org