06/27/2001 Env Bd Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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• • • 2. Lino Lakes is located in the southeast corner of Anoka County. It encompasses 33 square miles of land and water and entirely surrounds the city of Centerville. Lino Lakes straddles the boundary (which runs diagonally approximately from the northeast to the southwest corners of the city) of two Ecological Classification System subsections- the Anoka Sandplain to the west and the St. Croix Moraines and Outwash Plains on the east edge of the city. Classification of land cover using the Minnesota Land Cover Classification System (MN DNR, 2000) has not been completed for this city. In 1999, Brauer and Associates Ltd in conjunction with Applied Ecological Services Inc., under contract with the City of Lino Lakes, prepared an ecological delineation and land cover type mapping effort for the entire township using a somewhat different system. Their report did not include any identification of areas within the City which deserve special consideration due to natural resources attributes. A summary of research (Wovcha 1995) indicates that vegetation in Lino Lakes before Euro- American settlement was predominately oak openings and barrens (oak woodlands and brushland) on the uplands with wet prairie, marshes, and sloughs surrounding the many large lakes. Big Woods, aspen -oak lands and conifer bogs and swamps were minor vegetative components but important aspects of habitat diversity. Research also indicated that the.large lakes and marshes in southeastern Anoka County have attracted humans from the time since the glaciers melted. Archaeologists have found artifacts indicating that Native Americans apparently inhabited the area for much of the historic and prehistoric times. These people were sustained by the same natural resources - wild rice, waterfowl, deer and forests - that attracted Euro - American settlers in the 1840s and 1850s. These natural resources began to decline soon after Euro- American settlers arrived to farm the land. Wovcha (1995) gives a concise description of the changes as follows. "The wild rice beds disappeared rapidly around 1900 when the lakes became muddied, either by agriculture or the introduction of carp. Ducks and geese became less abundant as the wild rice diminished. A charcoal factory in Centerville placed such a demand on the surrounding oak forests that by the 1900s oak trees had been depleted... Much of the remaining upland vegetation in the area was cleared for crop land ... and drainage ditches were constructed through the marshes." At present, little native vegetation remains. However, significant remnants of presettlement native plant communities have been identified by the Minnesota County Biological Survey including cattail marsh, shrub swamp and emergent marsh located in the northeast portion of the city in association with the wetlands around Rondeau Lake, along Rice Creek and the northern end of Peltier Lake (Figure 1). Small remnants of maple basswood (Big Woods) occur on the islands in Peltier and Rondeau Lakes. A few acres of oak forest dry subtype occur east of Rondeau Lake. Most of the present marshes and swamps are dominated by invasive species such as cattail and reed canary grass and lack many of the native wetland plant species characteristic of wetlands undisturbed by agriculture, drainage or other factors.