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North Shore Highlands

Ecoregion in MN

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A distinctive and popular ecoregion of Minnesota, the Minnesota shore of Lake Superior is a spectacular landscape of shoreline ascending to high bluffs for most of the ecoregion from Duluth for over 220 km to the Canadian border. The shore of Lake Superior is the lowest elevation in Minnesota, about 180 m, and the highest point in Minnesota, Eagle Mountain at 700 m in Ecoregion 50n, is only about 24 km from the shore. Land cover is largely mixed forest and shrubland with numerous small wetlands, few lakes, and little if any agriculture. The upland rural areas in the ecoregion north of Duluth to around Two Harbors have homesites and some cleared land for hay and pasture. The shore itself has many resorts and campgrounds and is a well developed tourist area. The presettlement vegetation was primarily white and red pine in the southern half and aspen and birch in the northern half with scattered patches of conifer bog and swamp. Close to the shore the soils are forest Udalfs, and poorly developed, shallow Orthents; in the upland the soils are less developed forest Udepts. The landscape formed from the Superior Lobe of the Wisconsin glaciation and is primarily till plain with scoured bedrock upland in the central and far northern parts of the ecoregion. This ecoregion, along with the Blufflands and Coulees (52b), is one of the two areas in Minnesota that support cold water lakes and streams with trout populations, although the native trout have now largely been replaced by introduced salmonid species that are either better suited to current conditions, or out-compete the native species. About 75% of this ecoregion was deciduous, evergreen, and mixed forest and 15% wetlands in 2013.

— EPA

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Ecoregion