SURVEYORSNatasha Kassulke

The notebooks are about 150years old. Some of the paperhas deteriorated and ink hasfaded. The handwriting variesfrom fine script to analmost unreadable scrawl.

And the records are written in short-hand. Yet, those able to decipher theseU.S. Public Land Survey System (PLSS)notebooks are treated to some useful tales.University of Wisconsin-Madison forestecology professor David Mladenoff explainsthat these notes (collectively known as ArchivesSeries 701) provide a view of vegetation atthe time of the original land surveys inthe 19th century, before intensive logging,farming, industrial development and Euro-American settlement. They are used to recreate historic vegetation maps with general descriptionsof the dominant vegetation, such as forest types, wetlands, prairies and savannas.

SEEWISCONSINCENTURY

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Historic notebooks play acritical role in the future ofsustainable ecosystems.

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Microfilm copies of surveyors’ notes are housed with the Wisconsin Historical Society. Original notes and survey plats plus additional local land officerecords are held by the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands in Madison. Images of surveyors’ notes and the survey plats can be foundat digicoll.library.wisc.edu/SurveyNotes

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U.S. Deputy Surveyor Ira Cook

Deputy surveyors, who led the field crews, generally were private contractors andthey recorded observations of land cover and use in Wisconsin in the 1800s.

square blocks of land called sec-tions. Surveyors were joined bychainmen who stretched out themeasuring chain, and sometimesby axmen, flagmen or markers andgeneral laborers. Surveying crewscarried tools, camping suppliesand sometimes even canoes.

The Wisconsin survey seriesbegins with a field notebookcompleted by deputy surveyorLucius Lyon in 1830. He andhis surveying team walkedand marked a portion of whatwould become the Wisconsin/Illinois border.

Although this was a landsurvey rather than a botanical

survey or inventory,at each half-mileand section (mile)endpoint surveyorsnoted the location,species and sizeof two to four“witness trees”(or bearing trees).These trees werescribed withthe corner postidentification. It islargely these treedata that are the basisfor the vegetationmapping presentedhere. In areaswithout trees such

as prairies and marshes, mounds ofearth or stone were constructed tomark the corner locations. Witheach section corner, a brief descrip-tion of the vegetation, soils andother note-worthy observationswere summarized for the last mileof survey run.

The Public Land Survey workin Wisconsin was directed by aSurveyor General. For therectangular land survey toproceed, two major directionallines were established: an east-west line and a north-south line.The east-west line (the baseline)ran from Lake Michigan to theMississippi forming the boundarybetween Illinois and Wisconsin.The federal government desig-nated the second major line(north-south) called the FourthPrincipal Meridian, beginning atthe mouth of the Illinois Riverand running northwardintersecting the Wisconsin/Illinois baseline atthe Grant Countyand LafayetteCounty border.The point wherethe Fourth Princi-pal Meridian in-tersects with theeast-west baselineis known as the“Point ofBeginnings.” Allsurvey lines inWisconsin weremeasured fromthis point.

After estab-lishing the Pointof Beginnings,surveyors began to lay lines forindividual townships. Over 100surveyors worked in Wisconsinover the survey period. The sur-vey was systematically carriedout, with survey posts (woodenposts or stones) set every halfmile along a grid of one mile

During four consecutive weeks there wasnot a dry garment in the party, day or

night… we were constantly surrounded andas constantly excoriated by swarms orrather clouds of mosquitoes, and still moretroublesome insects; and consider furtherthat we were all the while confined to a line;and consequently had no choice of ground. . . and you can form some idea of oursuffering conditioning. I contracted to

execute this work at ten dollars per mile . . .but would not again, after a lifetime of

experience in the field, and a great fondnessfor camp life, enter upon the same, orsimilar survey, at any price whatsoever.

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Capion to gohere.

Between 1832 and 1866, United States governmentcontractors surveyed lands that would become theState of Wisconsin for the purpose of subdividingand selling land to timber companies, speculators

and settlers. The survey also was needed to make land grantsto railroad and canal companies to finance construction.

Excerpt from a letter by surveyorH.A.Wiltse in 1847{

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Wisconsin was subdivided into town-ships, along with the two original base-lines used to begin the survey in thestate. The inset of a single townshipshows its further subdivision intosquare-mile sections, and where themain survey markers were placed.

AFFIDAVITThe last portion is an affidavit orcertificate by which the surveyorswears to have done his workproperly and in compliancewith the terms of his contract.

There is variability in the fieldnotes. It’s likely that eachsurveyor had his own approachto surveying and his owninterpretation of the instructions.Researchers have been carefulto remember, when usingvegetation data, that these werecollected by surveyors ratherthan botanists or ecologists.

UNDERThe public land survey work was recorded in smallnotebooks that became the official survey record.Collectively these are known as the field notes.Within an individualtownship notebook,there is a predictableprogression ofentries. Most fieldnotebooks includethe following basicentries.

TITLE PAGEThis page includes the legaldescription of the surveyedtownship, Deputy Surveyorname and the dates that thework was done. Sometimesthe survey crew is also listedhere, and occasionally on thenext page.

SECTION LINE NOTESThe measurement system used was thestatute mile subdivided into chains and links,not feet and inches. A measuring chain is66 feet long and there are 80 chains in a mile.Each chain is composed of 100 links each ofwhich are 7.92 inches in length. To convertmeasurements from chains to feet, multiplythe number of chains by 66, i.e. 80 chains x66 (feet per chain) = 5,280 feet. Entries alsolist the species and diameter of bearing treesas well as direction and distance to thosetrees from survey posts. Other entries includelocations on the section lines where theyentered and left fields, swamps, prairie, wet-lands, timber or other landscape or other veg-etation types, crossing streams, or intersectingtrees directly on the survey line. At the end ofeach section line, the surveyor wrote a briefdescription of the mile just traveled.

MEANDER NOTESWhenever the surveyorsencountered a sizeable lake orriver along the line, they set apost at the shoreline. Forlarger lakes, once thesemeander posts were set at thesection lines that intersectedthe lake, the shoreline aroundthe lake was surveyed byconnecting the meandercorners by tangential lines.

GENERAL DESCRIPTIONAt the end of the township’ssurvey, the surveyors wrote ageneral description of what theyhad seen (such as level, rolling,broken) and soil (first, second orthird rate) as well as the domi-nant timber and understoryspecies seen along that mile.Some field notebooks list Indiantrails and villages, wagon roads,sugar camps, trading posts andsingle cabins. Some surveyorsfound lead mines, mill sites,scatterings of farms andcultivated fields.

SKETCH MAPThis map was drawn in thefield. Later, these maps, thetownship summary and fieldnotes were used by U.S.General Land Officedraftsmen to draft largermaps of each township.

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The Wisconsin DNR produced ageographic information system (GIS)database of statewide PLSS corners,allowing for information mappingand spatial analysis. This has been amore than 12-year ongoing projectwith several partners includingDNR Science Services and Forestryprograms staff.

Mladenoff explains that thismap and database have advantagesover past efforts. The Finley map,published in 1976 by the U.S. ForestService, had been compiled and quali-tatively mapped by hand by RobertFinley — Professor of GeographyEmeritus, University of WisconsinCenter System. This was a huge effortand a valuable tool used for manyyears. John Curtis and others in theUW Botanydepartment hadcreated a moregeneral, subjec-tively drawn mapin the 1950s. Alarge format, moregeneral map alsowas compiled andpublished as partof Chamberlin’sGeology ofWisconsin (1873to 1879).

The bigadvantage ofthe current GISdatabase is that itcan be analyzedwith many othermapped data sets,or classified atdifferent levels of detail. Large orsmall areas can be selectively mappedand analyzed for many uses, such asunderstanding the relationship ofvegetation to soil type and under-standing how landscape patterns,forests and wildlife habitats have

changed over time, as well as identify-ing priorities and locations for restor-ing ecosystems. For example, lookingat this map, it is clear that vegetationis not randomly distributed statewide.The vegetation pattern is a product ofinteraction among climate, soils andNative American use. Disturbancessuch as natural fires, and especiallywindstorms, also occurred and wereimportant in shaping the forests.

Native populations in the southburned the landscape more frequently,favorable to prairie, oak savanna andopen woodlands. Sandy soils left hereby glacial outwash in the north andan old glacial lake bed in the centralpart of the state were drier landscapesand burned more often, favoring pinespecies. Northern hardwoods, such as

sugar maple,yellow birch andbasswood, alongwith easternhemlock, pre-dominated onsites that rarelyburned and wereless sandy withgreater moisture-holding ability.

Surveyorsalso recorded fireand windthrowlocations andMladenoff’sgroup has usedthese data toshow wherenaturaldisturbanceswere important

in the northern forests.Before the data are used, it is

important to understand the limita-tions of how the data can be applied.Because the data were not collectedfor ecological purposes, they approxi-mate, but do not duplicate, quantita-

tive methods used for forest inventoryor ecological surveys today. Thereforethe variability and potential biases ofthe data need to be known and consid-ered. Several studies have been doneto understand biases in the data. Onesuch study used the same surveymethods as the original surveyors intoday’s current vegetationto see how accurately thesurvey data matched cur-rent vegetation. Technicalscientific publications onthese issues and otherresearch using the data canbe found at Mladenoff’sForest Landscape Ecologywebsite: landscape.forest.wisc.edu/

Changes during thelast 150 years due tologging, farming,reforesting and develop-ment have made itdifficult to assesswhat the presettlementecosystems looked like inWisconsin. Wild prairiefires declined in southernWisconsin as early as the1830s, allowing openlandscapes to quicklyrevert to brush and forest.Logging started around1850 and loggers werefollowed by settlerschanging the landscape.

This databasedevelopment project wasprimarily funded by theWisconsin Department ofNatural Resources andthe U.S. Fish and WildlifeService to understand relationshipsbetween locations of historicalvegetation and potential wildlifehabitat management. However, thedata have much broader implicationsand contributions were also receivedfrom the U.S. Forest Service, U.S.Geological Survey and the UW-Madison. The goal of the project wasnever to suggest restoration of the stateto historic conditions. That is notdesirable or possible. The goal was tounderstand where in the state are thebest places to manage different habitattypes based on where they occurrednaturally in the past.

The main user of the data has beenthe DNR for improving the landmanagement planning process.Dozens of agency projects, consult-ants, conservation organizations,

FROM NOTESTOMAPS

Frommicrofilms of these notebooks, University of Wisconsin re-searchers have extracted ecological information and compileda computerized, statewide tabular database of Wisconsin's 19th

century vegetation. David Mladenoff began the project in 1994 witha graduate student, GIS scientist Ted Sickley, and hired students.

NATIVE VEG

MAJOR NATURAL DISTURBANCES

HISTORIC VEGETATION

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In northern Wisconsin surveyors noted where fireand windthrow disturbances had occurred. Fewerlocations were mapped in southern Wisconsinbecause the open prairie and savanna showed lessevidence of such events.

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private individuals and researchershave used the data and been assistedby Mladenoff’s lab. Agency data usehas provided information about whatthe land formerly held and whatvegetation types different parts of thestate were capable of supporting.

This is very useful informationfor understanding sustainablemanagement and managing withinthe ecological boundaries of an area.It contrasts past practices in whichindividual agencies or programsdeveloped plans for the few speciesor resources for which they wereresponsible.

From the perspective of the cost ofachieving the desired goals, manage-ment plans will be most effectivewhen they respect the naturalvariability of the area and workwithin its boundaries and constraints.For example, reintroducing a speciesto an area where it once existed ismore likely to be successful and lesslikely to have unexpected, unwantedeffects than introducing a speciesnever found there.

More uses for the data arecontinually being found. For example,Mladenoff’s lab has used the under-standing of past vegetation, soils and

climate to simulate modeling of futureforests in the state with climate change.

“Ironically, paleoecologists arehelping us to better understand thepast climate that created the vegeta-tion we see in the public land surveydata,” he says. “The more we under-stand these past relationships, thebetter we understand in general howtree species respond to climate, evenas it continues to change. The useful-ness of these data will only continueto grow and help us manage land usetoday and in the future.”Natasha Kassulke is creative products managerforWisconsin Natural Resources magazine.

Hemlock-Yellow Birch

Sugar Maple

Aspen

Elm-Basswood-Sugar Maple

Beech

Cedar

Tamarack

Jack Pine

Red Pine

White Pine

Red Oak

Black Oak

Bur Oak

White Oak

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Note: Other species, some quite common,are contained within the dominant classeslabeled. Wetlands are under-representedby the data.

Wisconsin vegetation of the 1800swas the product of climate interac-tion, soil types, topography andNative American activity. Euro-American activity existed for 200years before this, but was highlylocalized at a few Great Lakes andmajor river sites.

While any vegetation map fromone period is static, there is someconstancy to the picture of the 1800sin Wisconsin. All tree species hadmigrated into the state by about 3,000years ago. Change occurred duringwarmer and cooler periods, and withthe different amounts of fire. Forexample, we know that the extent ofprairie varied with warm and coolperiods, as did the relative amounts ofpine and oak on the northwest sandplain. But studies of fossil pollen showthat the basic pattern we see at thescale of this map had been relativelyconstant, with some shifting abun-dance, for several thousand years.

Climate is the broadest gradient:warmer to the south and southwest,and colder to the north. Lakes Michi-gan and Superior modify extremes. Inthe south, warmer climate and morefrequent dry conditions contributedto conditions suitable for burning,likely largely due to greater NativeAmerican populations.

Resulting vegetation was largely agradient of open prairie to savanna,to open woodland in the southernpart of the state. A noteworthy mesicforest island, predominately sugarmaple, basswood, oak and otherspecies, occurred in the southwestalong the Kickapoo River, whichserved as a firebreak from fires beingdriven by prevailing southwesterlywinds. Black oak was most abundantin the central areas on sandy soils.White oak and bur oak were moreabundant to the west and east,respectively, but common throughout.

More closed canopy mesic forest,with beech a major component,occurred along Lake Michigan, withsugar maple and other species, andmore northern white cedar andhemlock on the Door County

peninsula in Lake Michigan. Beechabruptly reaches its western rangelimit just a few counties in from LakeMichigan.

Especially away from Lake Michi-gan, this mosaic in the south was theresult of dominant use of fire, interact-ing with climate, soils and topography.

Wetlands do not map well in thesouth based on the Public Land SurveySystem data because of the density ofthe PLSS survey points on the land-scape, and because wetlands are oftensmall and patchy, or long and narrowand were missed by survey points.

While we usually think of the

prairies as being more southerly, therewere several noteworthy large openprairie areas in west central Wiscon-sin. Survey notes suggest that theselikely differed somewhat in vegetationfrom those further south, havingmore brush and aspen.

In the north, cooler climate withless frequent drought favored moreconifer species, and less fire than inthe south. Lightning fire, and likelymore commonly fire caused byNative Americans, was most frequentin the sandy outwash plains in thenorth. These can be located by notingthe concentration of pines in theseplains in the northwest, north centraland northeast, as well as the sandyformer glacial Lake Wisconsin lakebedin the central part of the state. Redoak was common with pine.

Pine concentrations also can beseen along the border of the southernoak savannas and northern forests,where fires were also more commonthan generally in the north, and alongthe major river valleys, which oftenhave glacial outwash channels withsandier soils. The three species of

INTERPRETING THEMAPSDavid J. Mladenoff

Vegetation changes constantly; slowly with gradual climatechange, or faster with fire or human use. Wisconsin’s vege-tation has changed constantly since de-glaciation approxi-

mately 10,000 years ago, as climate warmed, cooled and warmedagain, and plant species migrated north at different rates.

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Limit of theLaurentideIce Sheet

Glaciatedprior toLaurentide

Driftless area

General soil regions are largely due to the legacy of past glacial activity, or its absence. Comparingthis map with the 1800s vegetation map shows the importance of soil types, especially dry, sandysoils, in driving vegetation. The Laurentide Ice Sheet covered northern and eastern Wisconsinduring the last glacial period.

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19th century map and the presentvegetation map is due to agriculture.Nearly all prairies, savanna and theeastern mesic forest with beech havebeen replaced by agriculture. Thoseremnant areas of oak savanna notconverted to agriculture grew intodense canopy following fire suppres-sion. The majority of wetlands in thesouth, poorly mapped with this datasource, have been eliminated by agri-cultural drainage and development.

In the north, the big change hasbeen large declines in the evergreenconifers in the uplands, the pines andhemlock. White pine is only fivepercent of its volume level in the1800s, and hemlock less than 0.5percent. In the north, the major causeof these declines is logging that oc-curred from the mid-1800s to theearly 1900s, followed by extreme,repeated slash fires. Significant agri-culture followed logging and stillpersists in the south central area ofnorthern Wisconsin.

On the other hand, the cessationof more varied, natural and NativeAmerican-caused fires has eliminatedthe open pine savannas and open

pines generally indicate a gradient ofgreater fire frequency and poorer,sandier soil, from white, to red, to jackpine. This is visible in the variability ofthe three northern sand plains. Thenorth central and northeast plains alsohad more variable topography andmore lakes to act as fire breaks thanthe northwest plain. Aspen (often withpaper birch) occurred most often withpine on the fire-prone sand plains andalong the savanna border in the westcentral area.

The PLSS data have shown thatwhite pine especially was morecommon than we had thought alongLake Superior, often on clay soils witha mix of boreal conifersand white birch. Similarly,yellow birch was evenmore common than be-lieved, and often dominantin the mesic forest regionwith sugar maple and hem-lock. Hemlock and yellowbirch reach the edge oftheir range east of thenorthwest sand plain,except for a few scatteredinfrequent occurrences fur-ther west and on the west-ern edge of Minnesota.

Many areas of lowlandforested wetlands wereoften dominated by tama-rack and white cedar, withspruce, fir and black ashalso visible. Many moresmaller areas also occurredin the north, but are too small to bemapped well by the density of thesurvey points on the landscape.

In a wide arc around and in be-tween the pine plains, the northernmesic forest of sugar maple, hemlockand yellow birch constituted thelargest and most abundant forest type,on better soils and with very infre-quent fire. Again, contrary to commonassumptions, this was the mostabundant forest type in northernWisconsin, followed by pine. In fact,sugar maple, yellow birch and hem-lock trees were all more abundantthan white pine, though white pinewas a close fourth.

Vegetation changeWhile vegetation change is indeed con-stant, the change from the 1800s tothe present has been unprecedented.Besides elimination of most prairie, sa-vanna and pine ecosystems, fossilpollen studies show us that relativeabundances of species changed aboutfive times as much since the 1800s aschanged in the preceding 3,000 years.

The most striking change in the

pine woodlands that occurred in the1800s, largely on and around thethree outwash plains. These areprobably among the ecosystemswith the greatest loss, even morethan the closed pine forests.

Research shows that contrary tocommon belief, less agriculture wasattempted than often assumed in thenorth. Following the fires, aspen wasfavored in the north and became thedominant forest type for the first halfof the 20th century, and the mostimportant commercial species. Thoseareas in the north that did not burn,largely on the better soils, becamedominated by a simplified mesic forestof predominantly sugar maple. Thisalso increased slowly since the 1950s,replacing some aspen, but has stoppedincreasing. Yellow birch was largelylost from these forests as a dominantspecies, as was hemlock.

Ironically, the satellite map oftoday’s vegetation cannot show thedetailed species and genus level forestchanges that we can derive from thesurvey data. Commonly availableLandsat satellite data, while detailed,cannot distinguish tree types well,beyond evergreen and broadleaveddeciduous.

White/red/jack pineSpruce/firMaple/northern hardwoodsAspen/birchElm/ash/cottonwoodOak/pineOak/hickoryShrublandGrasslandWetlandAgricultureUrbanBarrenOpen water

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Funding for this research provided by the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, Pittman-RobertsonProject W-160-P and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Wetlands have not been lost inthe north to the degree they have inthe south, especially forested wet-lands. However, northern wetlandsdependent on frequent fire have likelydeclined significantly.

Less visible, with maps of thiscoarse scale, are continuing changes tothe vegetation of the state due to veryhigh deer abundance. This continuesto affect both understory plants,herbaceous plants and shrubs suchas Canada yew, as well as browsesensitive tree species, inhibiting theirrecovery. These include hemlock,northern white cedar, yellow birch andwhite pine, especially in the north. Inthe south, oak regeneration is affectedby browsing as well as the lack of fire,which favors maple invasion.

Overall, changes have been drivenby human use that directly eliminatesecosystems, such as agriculture anddevelopment, especially in thesouth, and logging followed byextreme fire in the north. Currently,commercial forestry is moreimportant in the north, but alsocan either maintain types, such asaspen, or prevent forest successionto other types. Recent forest inven-tory data suggest that white pineis notably increasing in the north.The end of varied, natural fires hasaffected ecosystems in both thenorth and south.

Future changeFuture changes are perhaps lesslikely to be characterized by recoverythan we have assumed. Loss of seedsources for trees such as pine, hem-lock, yellow birch and cedar, alongwith deer browsing, will be the reasonfor some of this. Climate warmingdirectly, and broader global change-caused effects, such as new insect anddisease pests arriving due to globalcommerce, will undoubtedly have aneffect and already have. Our recentresearch using computer modeling

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FOREST DENSITYPRE-EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT

also suggests that northern forestspecies may decline with warming andsome at the southern edge of theirrange may be lost over the next century.Our biggest challenge now is uncer-tainty associated with what futurechanges will be from climate to landuse change.

Interestingly, even with great changein the recent past and likely change inthe future, the data on the vegetation of

the 1800s continue to be of greatvalue. First, because of high futureuncertainty and concern for biodiver-sity loss, a conservative approach tomaintain what we have had isprudent. Second, as paleoecologicalresearch continues to increase ourknowledge about past climates thatproduced the vegetation of the 1800s,it helps us to better understand species-climate relationships in general.

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Additional funding for the research described here was provided by Wisconsin DNR Bureau of ScienceServices and Bureau of Forestry, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and WildlifeService. Thanks to the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands. For more informationcontact: David J. Mladenoff, Forest Landscape Ecology Lab, Dept. of Forest & Wildlife Ecology,University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706. Website: landscape.forest.wisc.edu/

*The forest density map should be used as an approximate guide to illustraterelative gradients of openness. Actual tree density calculations from thesurvey data cannot precisely be made.

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