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Nearly 60% of the important timber and horticultural tree species found east of the Mississippi
River and 89.9% of NYS trees can be found within the valley. This tree diversity leads to a
diversity of ecosystems that can be found in the valley.
Some of the more unusual ecosystems are: the boreal Shushan White Spruce Outlier swamp in Shushan, NY; RamsHorn-Livingston Sanctuary, the largest tidal swamp forest on the Hudson River near Catskill, NY; pitch pine barrens and rocky ridges; the oak-hickory forests living from the southern end of the Hudson River Valley on the Palisades [comprised of mockernut, pignut and shagbark hickory plus white, chestnut and scarlet oak] to the shagbark hickory-white oak forest on Prospect Mountain outside of Lake George, NY at the northern end of the Hudson Valley. The oak-hickory forest type in the Hudson Valley is one of the northern extensions of the oak-hickory-American chestnut type in the eastern US. Surprisingly, despite more than 300 yrs of complex & intense land-use, pockets of old- & old 2nd growth forests can be used to reconstruct climate histories and natural long-term variations. |
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last updated 10/01
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