Introduction	Forest Types
Forest Characteristics	Management
Forest Contributions	Special Considerations
The Forest Plan	Assistance

 

---

FOREST MANAGEMENT GUIDELINES FOR MICHIGAN                          From the Michigan Society of American Foresters

---

Open Canopy Forest Types
[back to Forest Type Page]

Although not considered commercial forest types, small areas of open forests consisting of scattered or clumped trees—known as savannas or barrens—also occur in Michigan.  They represent a transition between closed forests and prairies and are maintained by frequent disturbances, usually fire or grazing.  Although they occupied more than 2 million acres in the state in the early 1800s, savannas are the rarest forest types in Michigan today.  Because many savannas occupied fertile mesic habitats, they were long ago converted to agriculture.  Many wet-mesic savanna habitats were drained or grew into closed forests.  Urban development also claimed much of the area once occupied by open forests.  Savanna communities in xeric habitats unsuitable for farming grew into closed forests when fire was excluded or when farmland was abandoned.  Today state, federal, and private agencies are actively working to preserve or restore these fascinating communities, which can be classified as follows [see the field guide by Dickmann (2004), Michigan Forest Communities, for a complete description of these types]:

• Southern lakeplain oak-hardwood openings are very rare, occurring in lowland habitats near the shores of Lakes Erie and St. Clair and Saginaw Bay;
• Southern oak barrens are found in dry, sandy xeric habitats in the southern part of the state;
• Northern pine and oak barrens occur in dry, sandy xeric habitats in the northern part of the state; 
• Great Lakes barrens are found in wide, sandy depressions between coastal sand dunes;
• Alvar savannas are rare communities growing on flat limestone or dolomitic bedrock close to the shores of the northern Great Lakes;
• Pine stump plains are found throughout northern Michigan and represent areas once densely forested that did not succeed back to trees following logging and wildfires.

Although savanna-barren communities are not a source of timber (except during restoration), they are important habitats for wildlife and savanna-prairie plants (some of them threatened or endangered) and represent unique ecological communities that should be maintained or restored.

Michigan SAF Home Page

This website is maintained by Bill Cook, Michigan State University Extension Forest in the Upper Peninsula.  Comments, questions, and suggestions are gratefully accepted. 

Last update of this page was 9 January, 2014

This site is hosted by School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science at Michigan Technological University.