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The Northern Lakes and Forests is a region of coniferous and northern hardwood forests, undulating till plains, moraine hills, broad lake basins, and extensive sandy outwash plains with numerous lakes and wetlands. The many lakes that dot the landscape are clearer and less productive than those in ecoregions to the south.
Soils in this ecoregion are relatively nutrient-poor glacial soils, thicker than in those to the north but generally lack the arability of soils in adjacent ecoregions to the south. The soils are less suited to agriculture than further south due to the shorter growing season, lower temperatures, and nutrient poor sandy and loamy glacial drift materials.
Lakes and Forests Information:
Description:
Glacial Soils
Many of these differences in soil fertility and underlying geology are from where the glaciers advanced and where they scraped the soil and deposited till. Northern Minnesota was scraped fairly clean down to the bedrock, with boulders, sand and clay left behind, while southern Minnesota was left with a rich, fine prairie type soil which is now used for agricultural.
The lakes in the Northern Lakes and Forests Ecoregion have characteristically low phosphorus and algae concentrations due to the abundance of forests, and sandy, relatively infertile soil, where as the lakes in the Central Plains Ecoregion in southern Minnesota tend to have higher phosphorus and algae concentrations due to the fertile black soil, agriculture and the Minnesota River Valley.
Location:
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Geographical Region:
Interior Lowlands
The Ancients
First Wayƒarer
The Earth
The Modern Man
The Steps
Steps Afoot
Steps Afield
The Appendixes
Itasca
State Park Campground
White Pine Lake
National Forest Campground
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