Rome Sand Plains is a pine barrens about west of the city center of

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

in Oneida County in central New York. It consists of a mosaic of sand dunes rising about above low peat bogs that lie between the dunes. The barrens are covered with mixed northern hardwood forests, meadows, and

wetlands A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...

. About are protected in conservation preserves. Pine barrens are typical of seacoasts; the Rome Sand Plains is one of only a handful of inland pine barrens remaining in the United States. A second inland pine barrens, the Albany Pine Bush, is also found in New York, located north and west of state's capital Albany. E. W. Russell has described the Sand Plains as follows, "The landscape today forms a sharp contrast with the surrounding flat, fertile farmland, which is almost all cleared of trees and planted in crops. Uplands, including some dunes, support forest vegetation of American beech, white oak (''

Quercus alba ''Quercus alba'', the white oak, is one of the preeminent hardwoods of eastern and central North America. It is a long-lived oak, native to eastern and central North America and found from Minnesota, Ontario, Quebec, and southern Maine south as ...

''), red and sugar maples, white and pitch pine (''

Pinus strobus ''Pinus strobus'', commonly called the eastern white pine, northern white pine, white pine, Weymouth pine (British), and soft pine is a large pine native to eastern North America. It occurs from Newfoundland (island), Newfoundland, Canada, west ...

'' and '' P. rigida''), gray birch ('' Betula populifolia''), hemlock, aspen (''

Populus ''Populus'' is a genus of 25–30 species of deciduous flowering plants in the family Salicaceae, native to most of the Northern Hemisphere. English names variously applied to different species include poplar (), aspen, and cottonwood. The we ...

'' spp.), American elm, and other northern hardwood species. Some uplands are also characterized as pitch pine heaths, dominated by pitch pines with an understory of blueberries (''

Vaccinium ''Vaccinium'' is a common and widespread genus of shrubs or dwarf shrubs in the heath family (Ericaceae). The fruits of many species are eaten by humans and some are of commercial importance, including the cranberry, blueberry, bilberry (wh ...

'' spp.) and other related ( ericaceous) shrubs. Pitch pine is the characteristic tree of the wetlands, along with aspen, gray birch, and red maple, along with an ericaceous shrub layer." Among the several rare species in the Sand Plains are the purple pitcher plant and a sundew (both of which are carnivorous plants), red-shouldered hawks,

marten A marten is a weasel-like mammal in the genus ''Martes'' within the subfamily Guloninae, in the family Mustelidae. They have bushy tails and large paws with partially retractile claws. The fur varies from yellowish to dark brown, depending on ...

s, and the frosted elfin butterfly, which is a threatened species in New York State. Other species to be found include wild blue lupine (also rare, and the food for the frosted elfin), barrens buckmoth (''Hemileuca maia''), whippoorwill, pine warbler and pitch pine, normally indigenous to coastal areas. The Rome Sand Plains were owned privately through about 1980. The sand was mined to make molds and cores for metal casting. An application for a permit to mine sand around 1980 triggered a regional effort to protect the area. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) began purchasing lands, working with

The Nature Conservancy The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, United States. it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US. Founded in ...

and other organizations. Approximately of the Sand Plains have been purchased by the NYSDEC, and are designated as the Rome Sand Plains Unique Area. The Nature Conservancy holds another . The Izaak Walton League holds about , Oneida County holds an additional as a County Forest, and a few acres are held by the City of Rome. A map showing these holdings was released by the NYSDEC in 2008; the map shows the location of three foot trails maintained by the NYSDEC and one by the Izaak Walton League. A consolidated management plan involving all five preserves, and addressing the entire Sand Plains area, was published in 2006. The sand plains are considered by geologists to be a relic of Lake Iroquois, which was a somewhat larger version of the present

Lake Ontario Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. The Canada–United Sta ...

that existed near the end of the last

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and g ...

about twelve thousand years ago. The level of Lake Iroquois was about higher than Lake Ontario's present level. Lake Iroquois drained to the Atlantic Ocean through the Mohawk and Hudson rivers, and its outlet was near the present Sand Plains. The work of Anderson and Lewis (1985) is the basis for these authors' views on the history of the post-glacial water levels. Lake Ontario's outlet is near the Thousand Islands, and the lake drains through the

Saint Lawrence River The St. Lawrence River (, ) is a large international river in the middle latitudes of North America connecting the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic Ocean. Its waters flow in a northeasterly direction from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrenc ...

; this outlet was dammed by ice in the period when Lake Iroquois existed.

See also

References

Further reading