Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Alvars and Lakeside Daisy

I've been surveying the Alvars, an extremely rare habitat type here in Ohio, for the Lakeside Daisy. Here's a rundown of this incredible habitat. An alvar is a very shallow soil system over limestone, dominated by red cedar and containing all kinds of extremely rare plants. In North America, Alvar communities are only know from a handful of locations near the Great Lakes shores of the U.S. and Canada.





Fossils from the Columbus Limestone, which is the top layer of limestone in the pictures above.


4 comments:

  1. Wow, those fossils are AMAZING! I hope you have more photos to share!

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  2. thank you, tom, so much for introducing me to alvars.

    i am an ecologist in florida that goes caving in TAG (Tn-Al-Ga) occasionally. tag's hills have limestone balds that appear to be similar to the description in wikipedia of alvars.

    i have not seen anything like that in florida, altho in many places the habitats are somewhat similar, but not really.

    clearly, i need to research alvars further. for example, i need to find out what they are called in tag, and why they are not called alvars.

    so much to learn - so little time. ain't it grand?!

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  3. Thanks Heather, nope, those are pretty much it for the Alvar system. I'm glad you enjoyed them.

    Florida- Interesting, check out alvars, and I'll check out TAG systems. Yes, this is a teaser post, I'm glad that I was able to get your interesting. So much to learn is absolutely right.

    Tom

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