Welcome!

Exploring Michigan’s Ecosystems, Past and Present

Presented as an alternative to a PowerPoint presentation, we (Myles Walimaa and Randy Swaty) hope to orient you to Michigan’s ecosystems as they were just prior to European Colonization and as of ~2020. This can certainly be built upon and these workflows may be used for any area of interest. The State of Michigan is the target area for this dashboard, since it is where both Randy and I have lived for years.

Randy is an ecologist for The Nature Conservancy and I am a former National Park Service employee. We both work with the Conservation Data Lab to mentor students in the art of computer coding and data visualization, particularly for conservation purposes.

For all charts:

PLEASE read the disclaimers on each slide explaining the assumptions with each dataset. This is meant for exploratory purposes only.

The Past

Observations and the dataset

Historically, Michigan was dominated by hardwood-dominated ecosystems, with a substantial showing of wetland (refered to as “riparian” in the source data set) conifer and mixed hardwood-conifer types.

This map was created using LANDFIRE’s Biophysical Settings. As there was no satellite imagery 300 years ago, this is a model of what the historical ecosystems looked like based soil types, climate, elevation, ecological succession, among many other datasets. The original data displayed plots of 30m x 30m squares that we call “pixels”, and Michigan has over 500 million of them!

This is what we think the distribution of ecosystems looked like prior to European settlement. The caretakers of this land at the time were the indigenous natives who called the Great Lakes their home. They recognized the value of fire for regeneration and resiliency, often performing “prescribed” burns to keep their home strong and healthy.

Explore this map created by Native Land Digital to learn more about which tribes were located where. Botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass provides valuable insight on the traditional ways the natives connected with the land.

DISCLAIMER:

Present

Observations and the dataset

This chart was created using LANDFIRE’s Existing Vegetation Type. This uses satellite imagery, ground assessment, and other methods to describe current “ecosystems” (or lack thereof). The main pattern to note is the substantial amount of agricultural types on the landscape today.

Existing Vegetation Type (EVT) has a “fine” scale classification called “EVT_NAME” and a “coarse” scale classification called “EVT_PHYS”. The map and the chart are based on “EVT_PHYS”

Does anything jump out to you as surprising?

What do you notice about the historical and current ratios of conifers-to-hardwoods?

DISCLAIMER:

Exploring Change

Observations and the dataset

This chart allows us to explore conversion of the historical ecosystems to 4 ‘novel’ land cover types:

Which ecosystems remain mostly the same? Is this surprising?

Where did most of the agricultural land come from? Do you notice any trends?

Are there any ecosystems that might be close to disappearing completely?

DISCLAIMER: Changes may be due to ‘real’ changes on the ground, or may be due to differences in mapping methods between the past and present datasets.

The map only depicts Agricultural and Developed land cover types. Map may be downloaded here

Coarse Look at Conversion

Observations and the dataset

This interactive chart shows us the flow of ecosystem conversion over broad land cover types.

Which ecosystems had the least amount of conversion?

What about the most? Where did they go? How many acres were converted?

Why did so little Agricultural land come from Coniferous ecosystems?

DISCLAIMER: Changes may be due to ‘real’ changes on the ground, or may be due to differences in mapping methods between the past and present datasets.

Fine Look at Conversion

Observations and the dataset

This is the data table that created the previous chart. Here you can see in detail how the ecosystems converted.

For example, 429,625 acres of North-Central Oak Barrens are now Eastern Cool Temperate Row Crop. Well, roughly.

Again, this is not a perfect comparison and is only intended on giving you a general idea of what’s going on.

ENJOY AND HAVE FUN!!

DISCLAIMER: Changes may be due to ‘real’ changes on the ground, or may be due to differences in mapping methods between the past and present datasets.