Feature Article June 3, 2004
LAND O' LAKES NewsWeb HomeContact Us
Sweet Spots in the Landscape
Landscapes are mosaics of patches -- a patchwork where wildlife moves among the patches, searching out the various resources that they need to get through their life history stages and the changing seasons.
Sweet spots are patches that contain an unusual amount of especially desirable resources of some sort. Think of an ordinary forest floor where you drop a big ball of hamburger. All the hamburger eaters will quickly recognize that ball of hamburger as a sweet spot in the mosaic that is that forest floor. They will come and feast on it. It is a rich resource patch. A vegetable garden in the edge of the forest will be treated the same way.
In a landscape that is mainly patches of various types of forest, a patch of non-woody, grasses or sedges becomes a sweet spot. From early green-up through fall and into winter, grasses and sedges grow continuously, despite grazing, and by fall can contain over 20 percent protein. These are rich patches, especially if the surrounding landscape is mature woody species. Hayfields nestled in the forest are such sweet spots. So are beaver meadows after the pond has gone and has been replaced largely by a sedge meadow. Such places are especially sweet when they green up just after snowmelt.
Marshes also produce much more nutritious soft tissue than most other forest patches. Forest species such as deer or moose move into marshes and marshy borders of rivers and lakes because the grazing harvest is so much greater than in mature forest patches.
Among the types of forest patches, very young second growth, saplings and suckers are very highly productive compared to more mature patches. The reason is simply that young sprouts are putting most of the solar energy that they capture into living plant tissue. A mature tree has much more non-living, support tissue, like wood and bark, and much less living tissue, like leaves. In addition, most sprouts and suckers regrow repeatedly when they are chewed off. This is easy to see along shores where beavers continuously harvest regrown red maple sprouts.
Next time you see a corn field with a herd of deer and a bunch of coons feeding in it, try to imagine how it makes sense as a sweet spot in the surrounding landscape. Seeing how the patches of the landscape work as a mosaic ecosystem will let you think about stewardship that will be very effective.
