Beaver Ponds and the Flow of Water in Northern Landscapes

Abstract

After the ice sheet retreated, after the drainage patterns became organized, after the North Woods plant communities assembled themselves, herbivores such as moose, deer, and caribou quickly followed. The arrival of these herbivores signaled the beginnings of northern food webs. Many of these herbivores in turn controlled the distribution and growth of the plants they ate and therefore the composition of the plant communities. But no herbivore in the North Woods, and few anywhere on Earth, had as large an effect on the landscape as the beaver.

The ice sheet may have sculpted the landscape, but beavers now control the hydrology of much of the northern half of the continent.