NH-Ossipee+Lake+Road+Pine+Barrens


 * =Birding in New Hampshire=

Carroll County
Freedom =Ossipee Pine Barrens= Ossipee, New Hampshire 03814 Ossipee Pine Barrens webpage Ossipee Lake Alliance website Ossipee Pine Barrens brochure and map

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Ossipee Lake Rd. pine barrens, Freedom
Coordinates: 43.8286447, -71.1703777 eBird links: Hotspot map View details Recent visits My eBird links: Location life list Submit data

About Ossipee Lake Rd. pine barrens
The Ossipee Pine Barrens were shaped more than ten thousand years ago when retreating ice age glaciers left behind a broad, deep sandy outwash plain. Too dry and nutrient-poor to support agriculture or many of the more typical forests of northern New England, areas with these sandy-gravelly soil types became known as “barrens.” Despite the tough growing conditions, however, this area is hardly barren - a forest of pitch pine and scrub oak thrives here, rejuvenated over the eons by lightning and human-sparked fires. It’s a patchwork of pine woods and scrub oak: dense and tangled in some places, open and airy in others, with an inviting bed of blueberries and ferns near the ground.

Pine barrens are a globally rare forest type, and one of the state’s most endangered landscapes. A combination of flat topography, well-drained soils, and proximity to population centers has resulted in the development and conversion of most of New Hampshire’s original pine barrens. The pine barrens ecosystem of Ossipee, Madison, Freedom, and Tamworth is the last relatively large and intact example in our state. This unique habitat supports a diversity of uncommon wildlife, including nearly two dozen threatened and endangered moths and butterflies – some found nowhere else in New Hampshire. These insects use pitch pine and scrub oak, and understory plants like sweet fern and low-bush blueberry for food and as a place to lay their eggs. The pine barrens also provide very important breeding habitat for several declining bird species like whip-poor-wills, common nighthawk, and the Eastern towhee. The preserve also includes a mile of frontage on the West Branch River and another mile of frontage on Cook’s Pond and River which drain into Silver Lake.

The Ossipee Pine Barrens not only provide habitat for a diversity of unique and rare plants and animals in New Hampshire, but they also safeguard and recharge the largest stratified-drift aquifer in the state. Residences around Silver Lake and the pine barrens rely on clean drinking water extracted from private and public waters supply wells dug into the Ossipee aquifer. Protecting these pine barren properties is an important step in maintaining water quality and clean drinking water resources in the Ossipee watershed.

Pitch pine and scrub oak are uniquely suited to dry, acidic soils of the pine barrens and rely on periodic fires for the regeneration and sustainability of the forest. Mature pitch pines have a thick bark that protects the living tissues of the tree during fire episodes, and their seeds readily germinate in soils exposed after a fire. Scrub oak survives fire by having a taproot that is as large as the above-ground portion of the tree. If the tree is burned by fire, the taproot often survives and is able to sprout new growth. Several of the rare moths and butterflies that populate the pine barrens have also evolved behaviors to survive and respond to fire, by burrowing under the soil during the burn season. From Ossipee Lake Rd. pine barrens webpage

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media type="custom" key="29300759" || L951054 US US-NH US-NH-003 43.8286447 -71.1703777 Ossipee Lake Rd. pine barrens, Freedom