Regional Landscape Ecosystems of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin
SUB-SUBSECTION IX.7.1. Gay
DISCUSSION: Sub-subsection IX.7.1 consists of broad sandy ridges, up to 550 feet high, with gentle to moderate slopes.
ELEVATION: 602 to 1,000 feet (184 to 305 m).
AREA: 850 square miles (2,200 sq km).
STATES: Michigan.
CLIMATE: See subsection.
BEDROCK GEOLOGY: Jacobsville sandstone of Precambrian age is only locally exposed (Reed and Daniels 1987, Morey et al. 1982).
LANDFORMS: Broad ground-moraine ridges characterize most of the sub-subsection, but a narrow band of sand lake plain extends along the Keweenaw Bay shoreline for approximately 25 miles. Abandoned, poorly drained beach terraces occur far above the present Lake Superior water levels.
LAKES AND STREAMS: A few large lakes occur on both the ground moraine and the lake plain parts of the sub-subsection. The large lakes on the ground moraine include Lake Linden, Mud Lake, and Lake Gratiot. The lakes on the sand lake plain include Rice and Deer Lakes and Lac La Belle. Lac La Belle is part of an embayment of Bete Grise Bay of Lake Superior, which has been separated from the bay by sandbars. Extensive shallow peatlands surround the lakes on the sand lake plain. Several extensive wetlands occupy depressions between the ridges and the shoreline near Keweenaw Bay at the northeastern end of the subsection. The largest of these coastal wetlands, 1 to 4 miles wide and 25 miles long, is on a plain of lacustrine sand. The Tobacco and Traverse Rivers meander across the flat sand plain.
SOILS: Gravelly sands and sandy loams. Soils of the uplands are typically well-drained, acidic, loamy sands and sandy loams derived largely from the underlying Jacobsville sandstone and shale. Soils tend to be rockier in the north. Soils on abandoned lake terraces are often rocky and poorly drained.
PRESETTLEMENT VEGETATION: On the sandy ground moraine of the eastern Keweenaw Peninsula, northern hardwoods covered most of the landscape. Sugar maple, basswood, and hophornbeam were the most common species. Eastern hemlock was more common along the shorelines, where it often had more than 50 percent relative dominance in the overstory (Bourdo 1954).
Poorly drained portions of the moraines were dominated by northern white-cedar, black spruce, and balsam fir. Cedar swamps ringed by thickets of speckled alder were common in narrow valleys between ridges.
On the sandy lake plain along Keweenaw Bay, complexes of forested beach ridges and swales occurred. The wide swales had shallow organic (peat) soils dominated by stunted tamarack and black spruce. The larger ridges supported white pine and red pine; the smaller, lower ridges often supported northern white-cedar and other swamp hardwoods or conifers. An extensive shallow peatland, with a narrow border of emergent marsh, surrounded Lac La Belle.
Hardwood-conifer swamps, containing northern white-cedar, balsam fir, black spruce, paper birch, and black ash, were also found on rocky, poorly drained beach terraces far above the present lake level.
NATURAL DISTURBANCE: GLO surveyors noted many windthrows throughout the poorly drained soils of this sub-subsection.
PRESENT VEGETATION AND LAND USE: Native American encampments were noted by surveyors around Little Traverse Bay in 1845. Logging, mining, and pasture have been the historically important land uses here. The deposition of mine tailings along the shoreline is most evident at Gay; but mining tailings have been deposited in many other areas, both wetland and upland, throughout the sub-subsection.
Recently, recreational and cottage development along the shoreline and along inland lakes has intensified.
RARE PLANT COMMUNITIES: None are known.
RARE PLANTS: Arenaria macrophylla (bigleaf sandwort), Calypso bulbosa (Calypso or fairy-slipper), Castilleja septentrionalis (pale Indian paintbrush), Crataegus douglasii (black hawthorn), Elymus glaucus (blue wild-rye), Epilobium palustre (marsh willow-herb), Salix pellita (satiny willow), and Scirpus torreji (Torrey's bulrush).
RARE ANIMALS: Falco columbarius (merlin).
NATURAL AREAS:
PUBLIC LAND MANAGERS: State Forests: Copper Country; State Environmental Areas: Traverse Island.
CONSERVATION CONCERNS: Forest cutting has been recent and severe, eliminating most or all mature forest. At the northern end of the sub-subsection, on the Keweenaw Peninsula, development of second homes may occur, but probably not to the degree expected along the western, rocky shoreline of the peninsula.
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