Allegheny Highlands forests


The Allegheny Highlands forests are a temperate broadleaf and mixed forests ecoregion of North America, as defined by the World Wildlife Fund.

Setting

The ecoregion consists of four separate blocks of mixed forest surrounded by lower lying areas of hardwood forest as follows: the Northern Allegheny Plateau in New York State and Pennsylvania including the Catskill Mountains, the Poconos, the Finger Lakes and French Creek areas; areas of the north and central Appalachians; the western Allegheny Plateau in western Pennsylvania and Ohio; and the upland plain around Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

Climate

The ecoregion has a humid continental climate with warm to hot summers.

Flora

Most of this forest was cleared in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Although all individual trees species still remain, their quantities and distribution are radically different from the forest's original state. The Finger Lakes area has a particularly rich mixture of woodland, while the pinewoods in the Pocono Mountains are a unique habitat.
Upland hardwood forests include red maple, American beech, black cherry, and black birch.
Allegheny hardwood forests consist of black cherry, white ash, and tulip poplar.
Mixed-oak forests of northern red oak, white oak, eastern black oak, and scarlet oak grow along major river drainages and on steep, drier slopes.
Northern hardwood forests include sugar maple and American beech. Also common are yellow birch, eastern hemlock, red maple, black cherry, and eastern white pine. Hemlock tends to follow stream drainages, while white pine prefers drier ridgetops. White ash, American elm, basswood, and hop hornbeam can occur locally.
Boreal forests occur at high elevations, particularly on the peaks of the Catskill Mountains. These forests include balsam fir, paper birch, mountain ash, and red cherry. Wild raisin and mountain holly are shrubs that grow in high elevation swamps, bogs, and ledgetops.

Fauna

Wildlife of the forest includes bobcat, American black bear, coyote, and flying squirrel. Birds include barred owl.

Threats and preservation

As well as logging and clearance for farmland another factor that affects the make-up of the forest is grazing, especially by deer, while suburban and tourist development is resulting in more habitat loss in the Catskills and the Finger Lakes especially. Protected areas include Allegheny National Forest, Sproul State Forest, Cook Forest State Park, Hammersley Wild Area, and Woodbourne Forest and Wildlife Preserve in Pennsylvania, and Allegany State Park, Catskill Park, Bergen-Byron Swamp and the shores of Hemlock Lake and Canadice Lakes in New York.