Laserfiche WebLink
28 Friends of the Mississippi River Camp Cozy Park NRMP <br />trees and an herbaceous understory indicative of savanna conditions. Many of the floodplain <br />forest areas had a sparser canopy and looked similar in structure to vegetation found in a <br />savanna-type landscape. While a thin strip of tree cover lines most of the riverbanks, some <br />areas were relatively open right up to the rivers’ edge. Moreover, in what is now some of the <br />larger floodplain areas, it is easy to see the more open nature of the habitat, with trees <br />interspersed with more open grassy areas. Over the last 70 years, fires have been suppressed in <br />the United States, and as a result, open, grass-dominated plant communities have been <br />encroached by pioneering woody species, and that has been the case at Camp Cozy where the <br />prairies and former oak savannas have decreased in extent over the last 80 years.