Niquette Bay State Park Site # 14 Overview
Niquette bay plot # 14 is located on a peninsula jutting out into Mallets Bay in the southern part of the park. The site can be accessed via the Burns trail and the Muhley trail. This is a very diverse site and contains several distinct natural communities as well as an interesting array of geological features. The site is approximately one hectare in area. Its southernmost tip is located in an area which was the site of a small forest fire in 2004. The eastern corner is located on the shore of mallets bay at the outlet of a small creek. The northern corner contours this small stream until the stream veers north. The western corner is located at a cedar ledge where there is exposed monkton quartzite. Between these corners are three distinct natural communities. The first is the limestone cedar community located along several of the ledges in our site. Red Pine and Northern White cedar dominate this community. Next we have perhaps our most diverse community, the mixed hardwood forest. This contains several species which are associated with more southern sights such as shagbark hickory and white oak. This is also home to beech, birch, sugar maple, silver maple, eastern white pine, green ash and several other tree and shrub species. The remaining part of this plot is Hemlock forest. Human disturbance has had a large effect on this plot in the past. The forest fire which occurred in 2004 eliminated the mature forest giving way to a primary successional forest of small shrubs and herbaceous plants as well as many saplings resembling the community composition of the surrounding forest. Interesting from an anthropological point of view is the rusted out car that is located near the center of our site. This indicates that there has very likely been a long history of human disturbances in this area. The bedrock geology is very interesting in this site because it straddles a geological divide between Monkton Quartzite to the west and Dunham Dolostone to the east. This distinction between these two types of bedrock makes this site an interesting study on bedrock and its effect on the ecosystem at large. Finally and what our group found the most interesting is the wide variety of fungus species on our plot. Through our explorations of this site we found over 10 different species of fungus including Indigo Milkies and Black Trumpet Chanterelles.
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