Habitat
The land surrounding Lake Ophelia was once part of a vast bottomland hardwood forest that stretched along the Mississippi River. Much of this forestland, including large areas of what would become Lake Ophelia National Wildlife Refuge, was cleared for agriculture in the 1970s. Levees have changed the hydrology of the refuge, but the underlying ridge/swale topography supports a variety of habitat types. Bottomland hardwood forest, croplands, fallow fields, moist soil units, and cypress-tupelo brakes are intermixed with meandering bayous, pristine lakes, ponds, sloughs, and the Red River. This variety of vegetative communities in turn supports a diversity of wildlife. Due to its location in east-central Louisiana, the refuge is served by the Mississippi and Central Flyways.
Read more about this topic: Lake Ophelia National Wildlife Refuge
Famous quotes containing the word habitat:
“Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them; and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.”
—William James (1842–1910)