Environment
The notch is noteworthy as one of the few locations in the Catskills where boreal forest occurs below 3,000 feet (914 m) in elevation. Forest fires in 1893 which destroyed 3,000 acres (12 km²) around the notch, mostly on the Plateau side, and the steep terrain have left depleted, thin soils where balsam fir and red spruce can be seen along the west (Hunter) side of the road from the pond up into the notch. Scrubby paper birch, also common to boreal forests, is the dominant deciduous species on the Plateau side.
Most of the lands around the notch are protected areas of the Catskill Park portion of New York's Forest Preserve. The Plateau lands are the western end of the Indian Head Wilderness Area; Hunter's are currently classified a step lower, as the Hunter Mountain Wild Forest, though a pending update to the Catskill State Land Master Plan would combine it with other properties to classify it, too, as wilderness.
Read more about this topic: Stony Clove Notch
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