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Mesabi Range

Ecoregion in MN

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This ecoregion is distinctive in Minnesota, and one of its best known areas because of the iron mining that, along with two other nearby areas, has provided much of the iron ore for the United States in the last 130 years. The heart of the ecoregion is a narrow range of hills or mountains of exposed Archaen rocks 60 to 90 m above the surrounding area in a line from near Grand Rapids in the southwest to Babbit, about 130 km east-northeast. The iron ore mines in these hills have produced over three billion metric tons of iron ore and have considerable remaining potential deposits, depending upon prices and technology. Adjacent to the southeast of the iron range is a series of copper, nickel, and platinum deposits that are largely undeveloped. The copper resource has the highest value of embodied energy of any natural resource in the state, about five times that of nickel, and about ten times that of the remaining iron ore (Campbell and Ohrt 2009, Table 8). The presettlement vegetation was mixed hardwoods and pines in the higher elevations and aspen and birch with patches of conifer bogs and swamps elsewhere. There are now large areas of land barren from mining or full of water in open pits. Most of the remaining area is mixed forest with some shrub and grassland. About 40% of this ecoregion was deciduous and mixed forest, 17% wetlands, and 12% barren in 2013.

— EPA

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