Just north of Lake Gogebic Station there are some high hills having bluffs on the southern exposures. These hills were visited, but they had been extensively logged and burned over and no attempt was made to trap for mammals on them.
Some large burned areas have grown up to sapling forests of aspens. Near the towns of Lake Gogebic and Merriweather nearly all the forests have been cleared away, but farther south on the sides of the lake the woods are still in their natural condition.
Habitats
The habitats studied in Gogebic and Ontonagon counties may be listed as follows:
Exposed shores:
Open-water
Beach
Dirt-bluff
Forest—shore
Protected shores:
Water lily
Pondweed
Rush
Submerged-sedge
Cat-tail
Willow-thicket
Mud-flat
Meadow:
Ditch-border
Tall-sedge
Grassy-meadow
Alder-thicket
Swamps:
Black ash swamp
Arbor-vitae swamp
Bogs:
Leather leaf bog
Sphagnum bog
Black spruce—tamarack bog
Forests:
Hemlock forest
White pine forest
Wet hardwood forest
Dry hardwood forest
Mountains:
Rock-bluff
Mountain-heath
Air:
Aerial
Burns and clearings:
Herbaceous stage
Shrub stage
Paper birch—aspen stage
Young hardwood forest stage
Artificial conditions:
Overflow swamp
Cultivated-field
Edificarian
This list of habitats is admittedly not complete for the regions visited, but is intended to include those which we studied. We had no opportunity of studying either the shores of a large river or jack pine ridges, both of which situations will undoubtedly have habitats not here recognized.
The habitats studied in Gogebic and Ontonagon counties but every habitat has been listed which seems to form a distinct type of mammal environment. We are firmly convinced that it is better to describe a great number of habitats rather than to lump different kinds of environments together. It is infinitely easier for a later worker to combine several habitats, which have been split too finely, than it is to separate the component habitats which may have been lumped together under one name.
No attempt is made to give complete lists of the plants found in each habitat, but only the more conspicuous plants or those of special importance to the mammals are mentioned. The plant names used are mostly taken from Darlington's list of Gogebic County plants.[1]