The New Jersey Pine Barrens

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The New Jersey Pine Barrens

• Developed By Adam F Sprague

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Pinelands

• The Pinelands is our country's first National
  Reserve and a U.S. Biosphere Reserve of the Man
  and the Biosphere Program It is designated a
  biosphere reserve by the United Nations and a
  "Last Great Place" by the Nature Conservancy for
  its environmental importance.
• This internationally important ecological region
  is 1.1 million acres in size and occupies 22 of
  New Jersey's land area
• In 1979, our state formed a partnership with the
  federal government to preserve, protect and
  enhance the natural and cultural resources of
  this special place.
• It is the largest body of open space on the
  Mid-Atlantic seaboard between Richmond and Boston
  and is underlain by aquifers containing 17
  trillion gallons of some of the purest water in
  the land

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The Curly Grass Fern, Schizaea pusilla, is a rare
and tiny member of the fern family which was
first discovered in the Pine Barrens near Quaker
Bridge. It grows in wet areas and its fronds look
like tiny, spiral blades of grass. It is
classified as a threatened species.
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Pinelands soil

• Much of the land within the 1.1 million acre
  Pinelands National Reserve contains soils
  developed from the Cohansey geologic formation.
  These soils are mostly medium to coarse grained
  sands, although some thin clay soil layers are
  present. This geologic formation was deposited on
  the ocean floor between 13 million and 25 million
  years ago during a time that geologists call the
  Miocene period.

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Pinelands soil

• The soils developed from the Cohansey formation
  are very porous and infertile because, for the
  most part, the parent material has a greater
  proportion of coarse sand particles than finer
  clay particles. The greater the proportion of
  coarse particles in a soil the less it is able to
  retain water and nutrients like calcium,
  magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium - "food"
  usually needed for plant growth

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Pinelands soil

• Soils are grouped into series according to the
  geologic material from which they develop, as
  well as the makeup of their topsoil, subsoil, and
  horizons (or layers) that are underneath the
  subsoil
• The Pinelands contains thirteen major soil
  series.

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Pinelands soil

• In order to simplify the understanding of
  Pinelands soils, this discussion will concentrate
  on five prevalent soil series that have developed
  from the Cohansey formation
• These five soil series--Lakewood, Lakehurst,
  Atsion, Berryland, and Muck--are major factors
  in' the Pinelands unique soil.-water-plant-animal
  relationship

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Pinelands soil

• Each area is formed under the influence of time,
  position (whether the soil is on a hill or in low
  areas with a fluctuating water table), parent
  material (sand or gravel), climate and biological
  activity

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Pine Barrens Soil

• The soils with the higher fluctuating water table
  tend to be situated in low level areas that have
  the ground water table near the surface. (There
  is virtually no surface runoff in the Pinelands.)
  Their surface colors are black underlain first by
  a light gray layer and then by reddish-brown and
  dark brown sandy layers. They may be generally
  categorized as wetland or bog soils.

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Pine Barrens Soil

• The organic surface layer of Lakewood and
  Lakehurst soils decomposes slowly because there
  are very few microorganisms present to break it
  down. The decomposition that does occur produces
  humic acid which moves downward with percolating
  water. Over a long period of time, this weak acid
  solution removes virtually all of the materials
  from the surface layer. The subsurface layer
  becomes almost pure quartz sand. The minerals
  (mostly iron compounds and iron joined with
  organic matter that are filtered out at the top
  of the subsoil) and organic matter form the three
  to four inch dark-brown layer directly beneath
  the gray layer.

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Pine Barrens Soil

• Bacteria that utilize the carbon for food in the
  Atsion and Berryland soils deplete and remove
  oxygen in their respiration process. As a result,
  the iron compounds are used as a substitute.
  After being used by the bacteria , the iron is
  said to be in a reduced state. In the reduced
  state, the mineral compounds are generally gray
  in color

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Pine Barrens Soil(Bog Iron)

• The underlying brown sandy layers are the result
  of iron compounds and fine humus particles
  leaching downward through the soils to the water
  table level in the summer. This leaching of iron
  compounds is part of the process by which bog
  iron is formed. The coarse textures and
  fluctuating water table found in the Atsion and
  Berryland soils make this process possible. Even
  minimal amounts of clay will prevent this process
  from occurring. Bog iron is often seen in stream
  beds and was important in the manufacture of
  cannon and shot used by George Washington's
  troops during the Revolutionary War.

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Bog Iron

• The orange to yellowish- brown flocculant
  material often seen near the banks, particularly
  in slow-flowing water. This is iron oxide formed
  by bacteria such as Leptothrix ochracea. It is
  this bacterium, and others that are similar, that
  oxidizes the iron present in the water and causes
  these large orange to brown colored flocs. This
  oxidation is believed to be involved in the
  formation of "Bog Iron".

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Bog Iron
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Bog Iron

• Their presence bacteria can be detected on the
  surface by the iridescent oily film they leave on
  the water (right), another sure sign of bog iron.

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Areas of Bog Iron formation
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Pine Barrens Soil

• Water table depth has a major effect on the sandy
  Pinelands soils as they develop from the parent
  material. The kinds of trees and shrubs that grow
  in different parts of the Pinelands are related
  to Water table depth and these five soil series
  stated. Plants that grow in the wetlands soils
  such as Atsion, Berryland and Muck have special
  adaptations that allow them to extract oxygen
  from the air rather than the generally saturated
  soil.

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Pine Barrens Soil

• When settlers first came to the region during the
  1600's and 1700's, they discovered most of the
  region's soils would not support cattle husbandry
  and the growing of vegetable and grain crops that
  were part of traditional European agriculture.
  For this reason, they named the region the "Pine
  Barrens". Since the 1800's and early 1900's,
  cranberries and blueberries (both requiring
  highly organic surface soil, a relatively high
  water table, and acidic conditions associated
  with Atsion, Berryland, and Muck soils) have been
  cultivated and grown on a commercial basis

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Pine Barrens Water

• Pinelands surface and aquifer water quality is
  both determined changed by many factors
  including
• soil
• climate and weather (The weather of New Jersey is
  considered temperate with an average of 45 inches
  of precipitation annually)
• people
• plants and animals

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Pine Barrens Water

• Physical and chemical characteristics of
  Pinelands water limit the variety of aquatic life
  include
• acidic nature
• considerable amounts of iron
• low amounts of alkaline metals and oxygen
• natural organic compounds resulting in its
  tea-colored stream water

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Pine Barrens Water

• The Cohansey Aquifer, containing 17 trillion
  gallons of mostly uncontaminated fresh water,
  lies beneath the Pinelands surface. Careful
  maintenance of the quality and quantity of this
  water resource is important to the well-being of
  the people, animals and plants in the region

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Pine Barrens Water

• The Cohansey Aquifer is highly susceptible to
  pollution because of the sandy, porous nature of
  the soil. Water passing through this sand
  formation has been compared to water filtering
  through a bucket of marbles. Water passes through
  the soil rapidly reaching the water table.
  Therefore, local sources of pollution can pass
  quickly into an aquifer locally then spread out
  with time despoiling larger and larger portions
  of the aquifer

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Pine Barrens Water

• Cohansey Aquifer
• Its area is about 2,000 square miles, and it is
  estimated to reach a depth of 37 feet in some
  places. This formation is seldom more than 20
  feet below the surface, and as a result, it
  greatly influences the surface waters. In the
  summer these streams are relatively cool,
  generally being below 25 C, and in winter they
  rarely freeze

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Pine Barrens Water

• Cohansey Aquifer
• The black or brown water color is caused by large
  amounts of humates arising from the drainage of
  the swamp's vegetation. These streams are very
  acid - the pH varies from about 3.6 to 5.2 with a
  mean around 4.4.

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Pine Barrens Water

• Because these streams are typically very acid,
  are low in alkaline metals, and contain
  considerable amounts of iron, they have a unique
  fauna and flora (though they may include some
  more tolerant species). For example, one finds
  few freshwater clams and snails in these waters
  because they require calcium to form their
  shells. Crustacea are typically scarce in waters
  with a pH below 6. Many fishes, such as
  bluegills, yellow perch, golden shiner and calico
  bass do not reproduce in water with a very low
  pH. The pickerel is one fish that seems to
  reproduce and be successful under these
  acid-water conditions.

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Pine Barrens Water

• Sources of pollution may include
• septic tanks
• landfills
• chemical spills and storage leaks
• dumping
• agricultural chemicals
• highway de-icing
• industrial waste

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Pine Barrens Water

• A lowering of the Pinelands water table, through
  drought or over pumping, could severely alter the
  Pinelands life by depriving it of the groundwater
  it needs.
• A lowering of the Pinelands water table will
  increase the probability of salt water invasion
  (intrusion).

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Pine Barrens Fire ecology

• Nutrient poor soil, acidic water and dry soil
  conditions are three major factors that influence
  the kind of vegetation that thrives in the fire
  prone forests of New Jersey's Pinelands

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Some of the reasons these conditions support the
growth of fire prone vegetation include

• Pinelands soils are acidic and, as such, forest
  litter accumulates and does not readily
  decompose. This lack of decomposition prevents
  the enrichment of the upper soil layers which are
  the layers that usually supply the nutrients
  (food) to the plants
• The highly permeable acidic soils in the
  Pinelands have a low water retention (water
  holding) capacity. This often results in dry soil
  conditions

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Cont.

• with little decomposed litter to enrich the
  region's soil, it is nutrient poor and often dry.
  Only vegetation like the highly flammable pitch
  pine can thrive under these conditions
• As a result of the presence of highly flammable
  vegetation, accumulation of dry forest litter,
  and dry soil conditions, the upland forests of
  the Pinelands are fire prone

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Fire Effects in New Jersey's Pine Barrens

• Large forest fires in the New Jersey Pine Barrens
  frequently take newspaper headlines in the
  spring, and sometimes in summer or fall, but
  hundreds of small fires throughout the year
  attract little attention. Fires are not rare in
  this section. Indians burned the woods
  extensively to improve hunting conditions. Ever
  since the first white men settled in New Jersey,
  fires have been common in the Pine Barrens.

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FACTORS MODIFYING FIRE EFFECTS ON UPLAND SITES
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Succession

• If fires are kept out and there are no other
  disturbances such as cutting, the usual forest
  growth that develops on cleared land in the
  Barrens follows this pattern first, a pine stand
  develops then hardwoods, chiefly oaks, seed
  under the pines. Later, as the pines mature and
  die, hardwoods dominate the stand. The succession
  from pines to- hardwoods is due to two
  factors(1) hardwoods can live and grow under
  more shade than pines, and (2) hardwood seeds,
  being bigger, can become establishedin the thick
  cover of dead leaves that accumulates under
  unburned stands.

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Species Susceptibility

• Pines and oaks differ in their susceptibility to
  fire. Oaks have thinner bark than the pitch and
  shortleaf pines of the Barrens, so less heat is
  needed to kill their cambium. However, pine
  crowns are burned far more frequently than the
  crowns of oaks because most fires occur when oaks
  are leafless. Most of the fire damage to oaks is
  through killing of the cambium near the base.
  When only part of the cambium is killed, the tree
  usually lives but an open wound develops. When
  all of the cambium is killed, the stem dies but
  sprouts may start from buds just underground.
  On pitch and shortleaf pines, fires usually
  damage the foliage and well-developed buds first.
  More heat is needed to kill the basal cambium,
  particularly of. large trees. Thus, these pines
  may have only their foliage killed they may also
  have their major buds and branches killed, yet
  live through forming new crown sprouts from
  dormant buds. If the part above ground dies but
  sprouts arise, they usually arise from protected
  dormant buds. A tree is completely killed if no
  sprouts develop.

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Tree Size

• Large trees have thick bark and crowns farther
  from the ground so they tend to suffer less
  damage than small trees. Certain fires have
  killed back all pines 1 to 4 inches in diameter
  (at breast height), but no pines with a breast
  height -diameter of over 13 inches. Less intense
  fires have killed back all oaks 1 to 4 inches in
  diameter, but only 12 percent of the oaks larger
  than 13 inches. (A tree is "killed back" if the
  part above ground is dead, but the root is still
  living and can produce sprouts . A tree is
  completely killed if the root, too, is dead.)

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Effects of Heat

• The temperature of a fire varies within its
  various sections, its size and its burning
  conditions. In some large fires, the head-fires
  have killed 68 percent of the pine stems 5 to 8
  inches in diameter while the less intense
  side-fires killed no pines of that size. Small
  fires are usually less intense and cause less
  damage than large ones. When air temperatures are
  low, heat is more quickly dissipated and more
  fire is needed to raise the temperature of plant
  tissues to the killing points. Thus, fires do
  less damage at low winter temperatures than in
  spring or summer. The intensity of a fire is also
  affected by fuel conditions. When the debris on
  the ground is dry only on top, fires may start
  and spread but they cannot create as much heat as
  when all the debris burns. Similarly, where there
  is less fuel, the fire will be less intense.

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Fire Frequency

• Frequent killing fires keep an area covered with
  small sprouts. Severe fires at fairly frequent
  intervals (less than 20 years) eventually
  eliminate species that do not bear seed at an
  early age-the apparent reason why shortleaf pine
  and black, white, and chestnut oaks are absent
  from existing stands of pitch pine and scrub
  (bear) oak.

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ROLE OF FIRE IN SHAPING UPLAND STANDS
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Plains Stands

• Low growth of pitch pine and scrub (bear and
  blackjack) oaks, such as that found near the
  Burlington-Ocean County line along Route 72, is
  due chiefly to repeated killing fires that keep
  sprouts young and small. These sprouts' growth is
  retarded by th e age of the stumps from which
  they grow and by competition among large numbers-
  of sprouts-as many as 249 one-year-old sprouts
  have been counted in a single clump. Recent
  studies indicate that the Plains stands' fire
  history has favored a race of pitch pines that is
  relatively slow-growing, develops a mature form
  relatively early and has a crooked form and
  serotinous cones. (Serotinous cones are pitchy
  enough to stay closed, at least for several
  years, unless opened by a fire's heat. By these
  mechanism s, fire produced the "miniature forest"
  that was once considered such a mystery.

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Pitch Pine-Scrub Oak Stands

• Stands similar in composition to those in the
  Plains arise from slightly less frequent or less
  intense fires which give the pines more growing
  time. However, these pines are usually
  slow-growing for two notable reasons (1) many
  stems probably started as sprouts and (2) many of
  the pines lived through one or more fires that
  killed their crowns.

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Oak-Pine Stands

• These usually have a dense understory of oak
  (black, white, chestnut, etc.) sprouts with some
  scattered pine sprouts, both having started after
  the last severe fire. Over this understory is a
  scattering of large pines that survived the last
  and, often, earlier fires. This composition
  apparently results from severe fires at intervals
  of possibly 30 to 40 years, certainly at
  longerintervals than in the pitch pine-scrub oak
  areas. In the oak-pine stands, large pines have
  usually been deformed by past fires and if any
  oaks survived the last fire, they will probably
  have basal wounds.

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FIRE EFFECTS OF SHRUBS AND HERBACEOUS VEGETATION

• Just as a history of fire can alter the
  composition of a forest, it can also affect the
  undergrowth. On upland sites, an undergrowth of
  huckleberries and low-bush blueberries prevails
  under climax hardwoods and most oak-pine stands.
  Frequent light f ires tend to reduce the shrub
  cover and favor herbaceous plants, especially
  along roads or under open stands. Severe fires
  can also reduce the shrub cover, especially of
  huckleberries. On sandy sites, severe fires favor
  such species as golden-heather un til they are
  once again crowded out by the spread of
  blueberries and huckleberries.

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FIRE'S EFFECTS ON LOWLAND SITES

• On lowland sites -- both the pine stands of
  poorly drained soils and the white-cedar stands
  of the swamps -- the effects of fire are just as
  varied as they on upland sites. For example,
  deep-burning fires the organic soils of swamps
  can create (1) ponds, flats with a shallow layer
  of water covered by leatherleaf (2) flats with a
  shallow layers of water covered by leatherleaf
  or(3) meadows containing a wide variety
  interesting herbaceous plants. Killing fires that
  do not burn deeply enough to create any of the
  above conditions can result in forests of
  white-cedar, of swamp hardwoods, or of a mixture
  of cedar and hardwoods.

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Batso
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Batso

• Iron Furnace Charcoal Fuel
• Charles Read of Burlington, constructed the Iron
  Furnace at Batsto in 1766. The furnace produced
  cannon as well as munitions and other items to
  aid the patriots during their struggle with the
  British. During years that followed, the Batsto
  furnace producing a variety of items such as
  pots, kettles, stoves, and fireplace backing. The
  furnace buildings no longer exist today. Charcoal
  was used as fuel for the furnace.

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Pine Barrens Fire ecology

• Much of the vegetation in the Pinelands has
  developed adaptations that help it survive the
  region's frequent fires. These include
• the thick bark of pitch pine that prevents fire
  from destroying the living tissue inside the
  trees stump sprouting of pitch pine and oak
  serotinous cones of pitch pine
• rhizomes (extensive underground stems that send
  up new leafy shoots) are found on plants like
  huckleberries and bracken ferns

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Wildife Hyla andersonii
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Wildlife Timber Rattler
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Northern Pine Snake
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Southern Leopard Frog
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Images of the Pines
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Pigmy Pines
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Pitcher Plant
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Barred Owl
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Dragon Mouth Orchids
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Swamp Pink
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Mullica River
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Batso River
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Wild High Bush Blueberry
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Pink Lady Slippers orchid
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Lily Leave Tway Blade
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Dragons Mouth Orchid
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Great Bay
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Folklore
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