Meadow - Transitional Meadows

Transitional Meadows

A transitional meadow occurs when a field, pasture, farmland, or other cleared land is no longer grazed by livestock and starts to display luxuriant growth extending to the flowering and seeding of its grass and wild flower species. The condition is however only temporary because the grasses eventually become shaded out when scrub and woody plants become well-established, being the forerunners of the return to a fully wooded state.

In North America prior to European colonization, Algonquian, Iroquois and other Native American people regularly cleared areas of forest to create transitional meadows where deer could find nutrition and be hunted. Many places named "Deerfield" are located at sites where Native Americans once practised this form of land management.

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