Natural Communities of Wisconsin

	Barrens		Grasslands
	Northern Forests		Savannas
	Southern Forests		Misc. Types
	Wetland		Aquatic

A community is an assemblage of different plant and animal species, living together in a particular area, at a particular time, in a specific habitat. Communities may be named for their dominant plant species (for example, pine barrens, sedge meadows, and oak savannas), a prominent environmental feature (Great Lakes Dune, Dry Cliff), or some combination of these factors. Communities range in size from less than an acre to thousands of acres. Communities are dynamic and always changing. Some change may be rapid while other change is too slow for many humans to notice during their brief lifetimes.

The location and abundance of ecological communities are determined by environmental factors such as climate, geology, landform, soils, and hydrology interacting with natural disturbance events, including windstorms, fires, droughts, floods, and insect infestations to shape Wisconsin's landscape. Human activities, beginning with Native Americans and continuing today with our pervasive and intensive uses of land and water, have also had profound impacts on Wisconsin's biological communities.

Each of the major community listed above represents an aggregation of more finely divided community types described by plant ecologists beginning in the 1950s (see "The Vegetation of Wisconsin" by John T. Curtis). The Natural Heritage Inventory Program tracks examples of all types of Wisconsin's natural communities, that are deemed significant because of their undistrubed condition, size, what occurs around them, or for other reasons.

Download a printable version of the Natural Heritage Inventory Natural Community Descriptions [PDF 180KB]