Natural Communities of New Hampshire
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Natural Communities of New Hampshire Daniel D. Sperduto William F. Nichols New Hampshire Natural Heritage Bureau and The Nature Conservancy New Hampshire Natural Heritage Bureau DRED — Division of Forests & Lands PO Box 1856 — 172 Pembroke Road, Concord, NH 03302-1856 (603) 271-2214 www.nh.gov/dred/divisions/forestandlands/bureaus/naturalheritage he New Hampshire Natural Heritage Bureau is located within the NH Department of Resources and Economic Development’s Division of Forests and Lands. Primarily an T information resource, the bureau finds, tracks, and facilitates the protection of New Hampshire’s rare plants and exemplary natural communities. It is not a regulatory agency; instead, the bureau works with landowners and land managers to help them protect New Hampshire’s natural heritage and meet their land-use needs. Its mission, as mandated by the Native Plant Protection Act of 1987 (NH RSA 217-A), is to determine protective measures and requirements for the survival of native plant species in the state, to investigate the condition and rarity of plant species, and to distribute information regarding the condition and protection of these species and their habitats. The New Hampshire Natural Heritage Bureau is an excellent source of information on plants and natural communities in New Hampshire, including their ecology and distribution in the state. It maintains the state’s only comprehensive database of New Hampshire’s exemplary natural communi- ties, exemplary natural community systems, rare plants, and rare animals, including their known locations. Rare wildlife locations are maintained in cooperation with the Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Program at the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, which has legal authority over all wildlife in the state. The bureau is also a member of the NatureServe network, which connects nearly 80 Natural Heritage Programs throughout the United States, Canada, and several Latin and South American countries. The Nature Conservancy provides ecology staff and other services to the bureau through a cooperative agreement with the state of New Hampshire. The University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension is an equal opportunity educator and employer. University of New Hampshire, U.S. Department of Agriculture and N.H. counties cooperating. DRED Natural Communities of New Hampshire Daniel D. Sperduto William F. Nichols Edited by Ben Kimball The New Hampshire Natural Heritage Bureau and The Nature Conservancy 2004 Sperduto, D.D. and William F. Nichols. 2004. Natural Communities of New Hampshire. NH Natural Heritage Bureau, Concord, NH. Pub. UNH Coop- erative Extension, Durham, NH. © 2004 by the New Hampshire Natural Heritage Bureau. All rights reserved. Second printing, with revisions, October 2005. ISBN 0–9719675–3–9 COVER PHOTOS: Daniel Sperduto LEFT: A dwarf shrub - bilberry - rush barren on the trail-less subalpine summit of Whitewall Mtn. in the White Mountains. The rare plant Parony- chia argyrocoma (silverling) grows in bedrock cracks in the foreground. TOP RIGHT: A stand of the state rare tree Betula nigra (river birch) on the edge of a swamp white oak floodplain forest (river birch variant) along Bea- ver Brook in Pelham. BOTTOM RIGHT: Salt marsh at Odiorne State Park in Rye. Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................................... vii ABOUT THE AUTHORS ......................................................................................................................... viii INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................ 1 Why Classify Natural Communities? ...................................................................................................... 1 Classification Approach and Limits ........................................................................................................ 2 Field Identification of Natural Communities .......................................................................................... 3 Exemplary Natural Communities ............................................................................................................ 3 CLASSIFICATION FORMAT.................................................................................................................... 5 PATTERNS IN THE LANDSCAPE: THE NATURAL DIVISIONS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE ........... 7 Climate and regional vegetation patterns ................................................................................................ 7 Landforms ............................................................................................................................................... 8 Ecoregions ............................................................................................................................................. 10 Open Uplands.............................................................................................................................................. 15 Alpine and subalpine communities ........................................................................................................ 15 Alpine herbaceous snowbank and other wet-mesic alpine communities ....................................... 16 • Alpine herbaceous snowbank/rill (S1) .......................................................................... 16 • Moist alpine herb - heath meadow (S1) ........................................................................ 18 • Alpine ravine shrub thicket (S1S2) ............................................................................... 18 Diapensia shrublands ..................................................................................................................... 19 • Diapensia shrubland (S1) .............................................................................................. 19 Dwarf shrub - sedge - rush meadows ............................................................................................. 20 • Alpine heath snowbank (S1S2) ..................................................................................... 20 • Bigelow’s sedge meadow (S1) ...................................................................................... 21 • Sedge - rush - heath meadow (S1) ................................................................................ 21 • Dwarf shrub - bilberry - rush barren (S2)...................................................................... 22 Krummholz and heath - krummholz .............................................................................................. 23 • Black spruce/balsam fir krummholz (S2S3) ................................................................. 24 • Labrador tea heath - krummholz (S2) ........................................................................... 24 • Sheep laurel - labrador tea heath - krummholz (S2) ..................................................... 25 Alpine/subalpine bogs and subalpine heath snowbanks ................................................................ 26 • Wet alpine/subalpine bog (S1)....................................................................................... 26 • Wooded subalpine bog/heath snowbank (S1S2) ........................................................... 27 • Subalpine sliding fen (S1) ............................................................................................. 28 Sparsely vegetated alpine and subalpine communities .................................................................. 29 • Felsenmeer (S2)............................................................................................................. 29 • Subalpine rocky bald (S2) ............................................................................................. 30 • Alpine cliff (S2) .............................................................................................................30 Landslides and talus barrens ................................................................................................................ 31 • Montane landslide (S3S4) ............................................................................................. 31 • Montane lichen talus barren (S3) .................................................................................. 32 • Temperate lichen talus barren (S2S3) ........................................................................... 32 i Natural Communities of New Hampshire Cliffs ...................................................................................................................................................... 33 • Montane acidic cliff (S5) ............................................................................................... 33 • Montane circumneutral cliff (S2S3) .............................................................................. 34 • Lowland acidic cliff (S4) ............................................................................................... 35 • Lowland circumneutral cliff (S2) .................................................................................. 36 Coastal dunes and inland beach strands............................................................................................... 37 Open coastal dune communities ............................................................................................. 37 • Beach grass grassland (S1) ...........................................................................................