Abstract
The presettlement tree cover (1831–33) of 3 townships in a southern Wisconsin landscape was analyzed using original survey records. Four forest types were identified: closed forest, open forest, savanna, and prairie. Comparisons of vegetation types and landscape pattern were made between the east and west sides of the Pecatonica River, which bisects the landscape and could have acted as a natural fire barrier. West of the river, presettlement tree species richness and diversity were lower and trees were smaller in diameter and less dense than to the east. The major vegetation types to the west were prairie (42% of landscape) and savanna (40%), both fire-susceptible types. Prairie was more common on gentle slopes than on other landforms. To the east, the landscape was 70% forested (closed plus open forest). Here, prairie was more frequent on steep dry sites. These vegetation differences, including the contrasting landscape placement of prairie, are attributed to distinct site characteristics and to disturbance (fire) regimes, with the west likely having more frequent fires. In terms of the four vegetation types, the east landscape was more homogeneous, being dominated by closed forest (50%). West of the Pecatonica River, the landscape was more heterogeneous because of the high proportion of both prairie and savanna; however, in terms of flammability of vegetation, the west was essentially homogeneous (82% prairie plus savanna).
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ambrose, H.W. III and Ambrose, K.P. 1981. A Handbook of Biological Investigation. Hunter Publ. Co, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Anderson, R.C. and Anderson, M.R. 1975. The presettlement vegetation of Williamson County, Illinois. Castanea 40: 345–363.
Anderson, R.C. and Brown, L.E. 1983. Comparative effects of fire on trees in a midwestern savannah and an adjacent forest. Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 110: 87–90.
Anderson, R.C. and Brown, L.C. 1986. Stability and instability in plant communities following fire. Amer. J. Bot. 73: 364–368.
Bazzaz, F.A. 1983. Characteristics of populations in relation to disturbance in natural and man-modified ecosystems. In Disturbance and Ecosystems. pp. 259–275. Edited by H.A. Mooney and M. Godron. Springer-Verlag, New York.
Bourdo, E.A. Jr. 1956. A review of the General Land Office survey and of its use in quantitative studies of former forests. Ecology 37: 754–768.
Cottam, G. 1949. The phytosociology of an oak woods in south-western Wisconsin. Ecology 40: 271–287.
Cottam, G. and Curtis, J.T. 1956. The use of distance measures in phytosociological sampling. Ecology 37: 451–460.
Curtis, J.T. 1955. The modification of mid-latitude grasslands and forests by man. In Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. pp. 721–736. Edited by W.L. Thomas. Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois.
Curtis, J.T. 1959. The Vegetation of Wisconsin. An Ordination of Plant Communities. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin.
Daubenmire, R. 1968. Ecology of fires in grasslands. Adv. Ecol. Res. 5: 209–266.
Davis, A.M. 1977. The prairie-deciduous forest ecotone in the Upper Middle West. Ann. Assoc. Amer. Geogr. 67: 204–213.
Dixon, P.M., Weiner, J., Mitchell-Olds, T. and Woodley, R. 1987. Bootstrapping the Gini coefficient of inequality. Ecology 68: 1548–1551.
Dorney, J.R. 1980. Presettlement vegetation of southeastern Wisconsin: Edaphic relationships and disturbance. MS Thesis. Dept. of Botany, Univ. of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Dunn, C.P. 1987. Post-settlement changes in tree composition of southeastern Wisconsin forested wetlands. Mich. Bot. 26: 43–51.
Dunn, C.P., Sharpe, D.M., Guntenspergen, G.R., Stearns, F. and Yang, Z. 1990. Methods for analyzing temporal changes in landscape pattern. In Quantitative Methods in Landscape Ecology. pp. 173–198. Edited by M.G. Turner and R.H. Gardner. Springer-Verlag, New York.
Efron, B. and Tibshirani, R. 1986. Bootstrap methods for standard errors, confidence intervals, and other measures of statistical accuracy. Stat. Sci. 1: 54–77.
Finley, R.W. 1976. Original vegetation cover of Wisconsin. North Central For Exp. Sta, USDA For Serv. St. Paul, Minnesota.
Forman, R.T.T. 1987. The ethics of isolation, the spread of disturbance, and landscape ecology. In Landscape Heterogeneity and Disturbance. pp. 213–229. Edited by M.G. Turner. Springer-Verlag, New York.
Forman, R.T.T. and Godron, M. 1986. Landscape Ecology. Wiley & Sons, New York.
Fowells, H.A. 1965. Silvics of Forest Trees of the United States. US Dept. Agr. Handb. No. 271. Forest Service. Washington, DC.
Gleason, H.A. 1922. The vegetational history of the Middle West. Ann. Assoc. Amer. Geogr. 12: 39–85.
Glocker, C.L. 1974. Soil survey of Green County, Wisconsin. USDA, Soil Conservation Service. Washington, DC.
Godron, M. and Forman, R.T.T. 1983. Landscape modification and changing ecological characteristics. In Disturbance and Ecosystems. pp. 12–28. Edited by H.A. Mooney and M. Godron. Springer-Verlag, New York.
Greenlee, J.M. and Langenheim, J.H. 1990. Historic fire regimes and their relation to vegetation patterns in the Monterey Bay area of California. Am. Midl. Nat. 124: 239–253.
Grimm, E.C. 1984. Fire and other factors controlling the Big Woods vegetation of Minnesota in the mid-nineteenth century. Ecol. Monogr. 54: 291–311.
Haberman, S.J. 1973. The analysis of residuals in cross-classified tables. Biometrics 29: 205–220.
Hanson, H.C. 1922. Prairie inclusions in the deciduous forest climax. Am. J. Bot. 9: 330–337.
Heinselman, M.L. 1973. Fire in the virgin forests of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota. J. Quatern. Res. 3: 329–382.
Host, G.E., Pregitzer, K.S., Ramm, C.W., Hart, J.B. and Cleland, D.T. 1987. Landform mediated differences in successional pathways among upland forest ecosystems in northern lower Michigan. For. Sci. 33: 445–457.
Kilburn, P.D. 1959. The prairie-forest ecotone in northeastern Illinois. Am. Midl. Nat. 62: 206–217.
Kline, V.M. and Cottam, G. 1979. Vegetation response to climate and fire in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin. Ecology 60: 861–868.
Leitner, L.A. and Jackson, M.T. 1981. Presettlement forests of the unglaciated portion of southern Illinois. Am. Midl. Nat. 105: 290–304.
Lindsey, A.A., Crankshaw, W.B. and Qadir, S.A. 1965. Soil relations and distribution map of the vegetation of presettlement Indiana. Bot. Gaz. 126: 155–163.
Little, E.L. Jr. 1979. Checklist of United States trees (native and naturalized). USDA Forest Service, Agr. Handb. No. 541. Washington, DC.
Lorimer, C.G. 1977. The presettlement forest and natural disturbance cycle of northeastern Maine. Ecology 58: 139–148.
Martin, L. 1965. The Physical Geography of Wisconsin. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin.
McCune, B. and Allen, T.F.H. 1985. Will similar forests develop on similar sites? Can. J. Bot. 63: 367–376.
McCune, B. and Cottam, G. 1985. The successional status of a southern Wisconsin oak woods. Ecology 66: 1270–1278.
McIntosh, R.P. 1957. The York Woods, a case history of forest succession in southern Wisconsin. Ecology 38: 29–37.
Mueller-Dombois, D. and Ellenberg, H. 1974. Aims and Methods of Vegetation Ecology. Wiley & Sons, New York.
Nigh, T.A., Pallardy, S.G. and Garrett, H.E. 1985. Sugar maple-environment relationships in the River Hills and central Ozark Mountains of Missouri. Am. Midl. Nat. 114: 235–251.
Peet, R.K. and Loucks, O.L. 1977. A gradient analysis of southern Wisconsin forests. Ecology 58: 485–499.
Pickett, S.T.A. and White, P.S. (eds.) 1985. The Ecology of Natural Disturbance and Patch Dynamics. Academic Press, New York.
Reiners, W.A. 1983. Disturbance and basic properties of ecosystem energetics. In Disturbance and Ecosystems. pp. 83–98. Edited by H.A. Mooney and M. Godron. Springer-Verlag, New York.
Risser, P.G., Karr, J.R. and Forman, R.T.T. 1984. Landscape Ecology. Directions and Approaches. Illinois Nat. Hist. Surv. Spec. Publ. No. 2. Champaign, Illinois.
Rodgers, C.S. and Anderson, R.C. 1979. Presettlement vegetation of two prairie peninsula counties. Bot. Gaz. 140: 232–240.
Sharpe, D.M., Guntenspergen, G.R., Dunn, C.P., Leitner, L.A. and Stearns, F. 1987. Vegetation dynamics in a southern Wisconsin agricultural landscape. In Landscape Heterogeneity and Disturbance. pp. 137–155. Edited by M.G. Turner. Springer-Verlag, New York.
Sharpe, D.M., Stearns, F., Burgess, R.L. and Johnson, W.C. 1981. Spatio-temporal patterns of forest ecosystems in man-dominated landscapes. Proc. Int. Congr. Neth. Soc. Landscape Ecol., Veldhoven, The Netherlands.
Shriner, F.A. and Copeland, F.A. 1904. Deforestation and creek flow about Monroe, Wisconsin. Bot Gaz. 37: 139–143.
Stearns, F.W. 1949. Ninety years change in a northern hardwood forest in Wisconsin. Ecology 30: 350–358.
Stewart, O.C. 1951. Burning and natural vegetation in the United States. Geogr. Rev. 41: 317–320.
Strahler, A.H. 1977. Response of woody species to site factors in Maryland, U.S.A.: Evaluation of sampling plans and of continuous and binary measurement techniques. Vegetatio 35: 1–19.
Strahler, A.H. 1978. Binary discriminant analysis: A new method for investigating species-environment relationships. Ecology 59: 108–116.
Tans, W. 1976. The presettlement vegetation of Columbia County, Wisconsin in the 1830's. Tech. Bull. No. 90, Dept. of Nat. Res., Madison, Wisconsin.
Turner, M.G. 1989. Landscape ecology: the effect of pattern on process. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 20: 171–197.
Turner, M.G. and Bratton, S.P. 1987. Fire, grazing, and the landscape heterogeneity of a Georgia barrier island. In Landscape Heterogeneity and Disturbance. pp. 84–101. Edited by M.G. Turner. Springer-Verlag, New York.
Turner, M.G., Gardner, R.H., Dale, V.H. and O'Neill, R.V. 1989. Predicting the spread of disturbance across heterogeneous landscapes. Oikos 55: 121–129.
Vogl, R.J. 1974. Effects of fire on grasslands. In Fire and Ecosystems. pp. 139–194. Edited by T.T. Kozlowski and C.E. Ahlgren. Academic Press, New York.
Ward, R.T. 1956. Vegetational change in a southern Wisconsin township. Proc. Iowa Acad. Sci. 63: 321–326.
Watson, B.G. 1966. Soil survey of Lafayette County, Wisconsin. USDA, Soil Conservation Serv., Washington, DC.
Weiner, J. 1985. Size hierarchies in experimental populations of annual plants. Ecology 66: 743–752.
Weiner, J. and Solbrig, O.T. 1984. The meaning and measurement of size hierarchies in plant populations. Oecologia 61: 334–336.
Wells, P.V. 1970. Historical factors controlling vegetation patterns and floristic distributions in the central plains region of North America. In Pleistocene and Recent Environments of the Central Great Plains. pp. 211–221. Edited by W. Dort Jr. and K.K. Jones Jr. Dept. Geol., Univ. of Kansas Spec. Publ. 3. Univ. Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas.
Whitford, P.B. 1958. A study of prairie remnants in southeastern Wisconsin. Ecology 39: 727–733.
Whitford, P.B. 1983. Man and the equilibrium between deciduous forest and grassland. In Man's Impact on Vegetation. pp. 163–172. Edited by W. Holzner, M.J.A. Werger and I. Ikusima. Dr W. Junk Publ., The Hague, The Netherlands.
Whitford, P.B. and Whitford, K. 1971. Savanna in central Wisconsin, U.S.A. Vegetatio 23: 77–87.
Whitney, G.G. 1982. Vegetation-site relationships in the presettlement forests of northeastern Ohio. Bot. Gaz. 143: 225–237.
Whitney, G.G. and Steiger, J.R. 1985. Site-factor determinants of the presettlement prairie-forest border areas of north-central Ohio. Bot. Gaz. 146: 421–430.
Wiens, J.A., Crawford, C.S. and Gosz, J.R. 1985. Boundary dynamics: A conceptual framework for studying landscape ecosystems. Oikos 45: 421–427.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Leitner, L.A., Dunn, C.P., Guntenspergen, G.R. et al. Effects of site, landscape features, and fire regime on vegetation patterns in presettlement southern Wisconsin. Landscape Ecol 5, 203–217 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00141435
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00141435