Changing Ideas About The Use Of Vegetation As An Indicator Of Soil Quality: Example Of New York And Michigan

Abstract

In Colonial America soil was commonly evaluated by the vegetation it produced: heavy timber and lush undergrowth indicated fertile soil—a thin covering of trees, barrenness. Settlers in the “Genesee Country” of New York developed new understandings about the relationship between soil quality and vegetation. Here was encountered a thinly-timbered landscape which they called “oak openings.” Although at first suspicious of the fertility of this thinly-timbered land, it was found to produce fine wheat crops. Thus, a new concept of landscape appraisal entered the culture of these people — thinly-timbered land may be fertile. By the time the agricultural frontier reached Inner Michigan, the old concepts about soil fertility and vegetation had been largely overturned. There, it was the open land (oak openings and prairie) that attracted the immigrants, not the heavy timber. The typical settlement sequence in Inner Michigan was to take up the prairies first, the oak openings next, and the heavy timber last.