Back in Northeast Ohio to check on my wife's family cottage, we visited the Lucia Nash Nature Preserve this morning. Located in Geauga County, this 648-acre refuge harbors an interesting mix of post-glacial ecosystems; it is owned and managed by The Nature Conservancy.
Snow Lake, a kettle lake, is the dominant geographic feature, surrounded by wetlands, wooded swamps and an upland beech-maple forest; the latter harbors scattered vernal pools and the only remaining white pine boreal fen in Ohio. Among the many avian residents are sandhill cranes; once extirpated from the region, the cranes returned in the 1980s. Though we did not encounter cranes this morning, we did see ospreys, double-crested cormorants and a wide variety of wetland songbirds.
Stretching across part of the Upper Cuyahoga River watershed, this preserve is also instrumental in protecting the purity of Akron's water supply. Visitors thus encounter glacial topography, glacial relic vegetation, a rich wetland ecosystem and a valuable hydrologic resource.
