Tree and woody vegetation evidence index for the Beaver archipelago, 2026

What this adds

Tree names were already present throughout the corpus, but at incompatible levels: a GLO surveyor’s “cedar,” an MNFI occurrence’s Thuja occidentalis, a guide appendix entry, and a modern stand comment are not the same kind of record. This index keeps the source classes separate while making them searchable together.

The index contains 50 normalized tree or woody-vegetation labels. Each record preserves a reported name, a scientific name only when the source or controlled normalization supports it, a resolution note, the source excerpt, and a source locator. A source match is not a tree count, basal-area measure, abundance estimate, or proof of current presence.

Strongest species-level connections

The MNFI occurrence records provide the most explicit modern ecological species context. Across 41 occurrence records, the index retains 15 tree names with scientific names as reported or normalized:

These records remain tied to named natural-community occurrences and their site descriptions. For example, the MNFI material connects northern white- cedar to boreal and conifer-swamp structure, white pine and red pine to sandy or dune-influenced settings, and black ash, red maple, and yellow birch to wetland or hardwood-swamp transitions. The index preserves the excerpts needed to read those relationships rather than flattening them into a species list.

Historical tree geography

The GLO layer records 335 tree-name matches across 47 page-bounded records. The most frequent normalized historical labels are northern white-cedar (43), fir (39), sugar maple (38), American beech (21), white birch (20), spruce (19), aspen (18), tamarack (18), eastern hemlock (17), and eastern white pine (15). These frequencies count descriptions, not trees.

The GLO evidence reaches beyond the seven large island frames. It includes Garden, Hog, High, Whiskey, North Fox, South Fox, Hat, Ojibwa, Trout, Gull, and Beaver observations, plus source labels such as “Garden and Hog Islands.” Historical common names are not silently over-resolved: “fir,” “spruce,” “white birch,” “maple,” “ironwood,” and “spotted maple” remain unresolved or species-broad where the source does not support a narrower identification.

This is especially useful for comparing tree history with soils and landforms. The preserved GLO excerpts retain sandy or stony ground, beach ridges, marshes, swamps, fire, windfall, and cutting alongside the tree names. Those are page-bounded environmental associations, not inferred habitat polygons.

Modern public-forest comments

The MIFI extraction contributes 1,369 sentence-level matches from 323 distinct stand-comment source records, all in the Beaver Island public-inventory query. It captures modern narrative vocabulary such as beech bark disease, emerald ash borer, deer browse, windthrow, regeneration, old growth, and transitions among aspen, cedar, fir, hemlock, maple, birch, oak, pine, spruce, ash, willow, and balsam poplar.

These comments add management and disturbance connectivity that a covertype code cannot provide. They also have strict limits: comments may use shorthand, typos, broad common names, or inherited observations; repeated mentions are not independent trees; and the public stand layer does not cover private land or the other islands in this query. The index retains the exact matched sentence and stand locator so the source can be reviewed before interpretation.

The 2024 guide’s tree list

The MNFI landowner guide contributes 16 explicitly labeled tree entries, including northern white cedar, balsam fir, black spruce, white and red pine, tamarack, white spruce, American beech, balsam poplar, basswood, ironwood, red oak, sugar maple, white ash, and yellow birch. The guide itself presents this as a non-exhaustive native-plant list without assigning each entry to an island. It is therefore a useful taxonomic bridge, not a distribution table.

Evidence limits

The index is a searchable evidence layer, not a complete flora, forest inventory, or species-distribution map. Historical common-name normalization can be uncertain; MNFI records are occurrence-bounded; the guide list is non-exhaustive; and MIFI comments are narrative stand attributes. Island labels such as “Garden and Hog Islands” are preserved rather than split into unsupported separate records. The index does not infer abundance, age, basal area, habitat suitability, ownership, or current presence from a name mention.

Added 3 August 2026. Recent changes