| Description: |
Airport Road is now part of the Ontario Living Legacy Conservation program with a designation of OLL:C2321 Conservation Reserve. For its small size, the conservation reserve has a good diversity of habitats. The changed in parent material and moisture regime are well-reflected in the vegetation composition. The moderately rich fen has a good diversity of moderately rich to rich fen species given its small areal extent (Foster and Harris, 2002).
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| Vegetation: |
Foster and Harris, 2002, identified 6 diffferent vegetative communities within this site and they are:
1. Treed Bog
2. Dense Deciduous Forest
3. Dense Coniferous Forest
4. Mixed Forest-mainly Coniferous
5. Sparse Coniferous Forest
Settlement and Developed Land
The conservation reserve encompasses a large (28 ha), open peatland in a depression in the centre of the reserve. It underlain by organic deposits that have accumulated over glaciolacustrine silts and clays, with sands towards the edges. Peat depth averages approximately 2 m, to a maximum of 10 m (Foster and Harris, 2002).
Most of the peatland is poor fen. A small (0.2 ha) pool located in the southwest corner of the reserve is surrounded by moderately rich graminoid fen (W19)(Photo2). Dominants include Hudsonian club rush, white beakrush, and sundews (Foster and Harris, 2002).
The peatland has an average slope of less than 0.2% and has been correctly characterized by the Ontario Peatland Inventory (OPI) as a basin deposit. However, the OPI erroneously identified the southeastern half of the peatland as having basin bog characteristics with the remainder predominately flat bog. The OPI measured pH as high as 5.3 in the “bog” formations and indicated that the peatland is influenced by mineral-rich surface runoff and groundwater movement from adjacent uplands. The peatland is therefore predominately fen, as confirmed during the field survey by the presence of numerous minerotrophic, fen-indicator plant species (Foster and Harris, 2002).
There is also upland forests and on the well-drained, medium sands of the moraine are dry, open jack pine dominated forests. On the moist, peaty phase soils at the toe slope of the moraine, black spruce dominated Ecosite 22 predominates (Photo 4). The uplands rise up 30 m in elevation from the peatland surface over a short distance (~250 m), but are still considered “weakly broken”.
Along with these Airport Road Conservation Reserve also has Black spruce conifer swamp (ES35), which borders the open wetland and thicket swamp in the southwestern portion the reserve. As organic deposits are replaced by thin glaciolacustrine sediments over bedrock, Ecosite 31 (Spruce-Pine/Feathermoss: Moist, Silty-Clayey Soil) and then Ecosite 25 (Pine-Spruce/Feathermoss: Fresh, Silty Soil) are found (Photo 3). These represent respectively the landform vegetation types "Treed Wetland: Organic Deposit" and "Conifer" or "Sparse Forests: Lacustrine Deposit" (Foster and Harris, 2002).
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| Landform: |
This site represents a well-developed toposequence or ecological gradient down off the moraine on to organic deposits overlying glaciolacustrine silts and clays, then upslope to shallow glaciolacustrine deposits over bedrock (Foster and Harris, 2002).
Bedrock Geology:
The Conservation Reserve lies along the boundary between the Archean age Wabigoon and English River subprovinces. No bedrock has been mapped within the Reserve. Granitic rocks of the Ghost Lake batholith, a very small portion of which probably wholly underlies the reserve (Satterly 1943), have been considered by various workers to belong to the English River subprovince (e.g. Breaks and Bond 1993; Blackburn et al 1993) or to lie within a boundary zone between the two subprovinces (e.g. Blackburn et al 1991). Outcrops of garnet-bearing biotite quartz schist have been mapped outside the Reserve close to its western boundary (Satterly 1943). The easterly trending strike of formations in this general area suggests that similar schists are likely to in part underlie the reserve. During the present inventory similar schists were observed south of the Reserve. Rocks of the Ghost Lake batholith are the diatexic, or completely melted, equivalent of these metasedimentary rocks, as are rare element (tantalum, lithium, berylium, niobium) bearing pegmatites that intrude the adjacent greenstone belt (Breaks and Bond 1993), in particular at Mavis Lake about 5 km to the east of the Reserve. Outcrops of mafic volcanic rocks of this greenstone belt that have been metamorphosed to amphibolite lie immediately adjacent to the Reserve along its southern margin, and some of this rock type may underlie the Reserve also.
Surficial Geology:
The Reserve lies along the south side of the Hartman moraine, upon which the adjacent Dryden Airport is built. A small portion of the moraine lies in the northeast portion of the Reserve (Roed 1980; Cowan and Sharpe 1991), where medium sand was augured at the surface during the present inventory. In this area the deposits have been interpreted to be of glaciofluvial ice contact origin (Roed 1980; Cowan and Sharpe 1991; Minning et al 1994). Glaciolacustrine clay of Lake Agassiz, much of which is rhythmic, occurs throughout the Dryden area, and is interpreted to underlie the southwest portion of the Reserve, probably overlapping on to bedrock in that area. The central portion of the Reserve is occupied by organic material that probably overlies clay. Outside of the Reserve, unsorted boulder and pebbly till was observed in a gravel pit and a road cut (Blackburn, 2002).
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| Representation: |
C2321 does not contain any unique landform-vegetation types, nor does it does it meet minimum gap analysis size requirements (50 ha). On the basis of prior gap analyses, Airport Road Conservation Reserve was considered representative in Site Region 4S-4 for deciduous forest and open peatland overlying weakly broken ground moraine (Table 3). However, neither was actually found in the reserve, although C2321 does provide representation in 4S-4 for other LV-types. No deciduous-dominated forests were recorded during fieldwork, aerial photograph interpretation, or on existing forest resource inventory maps. This may have resulted from the misclassification of speckled alder thicket swamps on the moraine and in the southwestern corner of the reserve.
Songbirds typical of conifer forests and peatlands, such as Swainson’s thrush and Blackburnian warbler, are represented in C2321. Evidence of moose and red squirrel was observed, and marten may be present, as they are recorded for the trapline overlapping the reserve (Foster and Harris, 2002).
Also this site is regionally significant for its fen communities and associated species (Foster and Harris, 2002).
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| Management Agency: |
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