Sohlberg Silver Lake State Natural Area

Sohlberg Silver Lake features a small seepage lake nestled in a landscape of rolling topography with low wooded hills and scattered open bogs and tamarack swamps. Situated in the bed of ancient Glacial Lake Wisconsin, the shallow lake has very soft, alkaline water and is moderately transparent. The fluctuating shoreline is dependent upon the local water table and the lake occupies anywhere from 7 to 16 acres depending on annual precipitation.

These seasonal and yearly fluctuations maintain the sandy and muck shores in a relatively open condition that harbor several rare plants more commonly found along the Atlantic coastal plain: cross milkwort, Virginia meadow beauty, and reticulated nut-rush. On the sandy shores and mud flats other uncommon species including autumn sedge, golden-pert, beak rushes, lowland rotala, and yellow-eyed-grass occur.

On the adjacent uplands grows an even-aged dry forest of scrubby oak and jack pine while surrounding lowlands contain a sphagnum moss and sedge bog with cotton grass and leather-leaf and a tamarack swamp forest with huckleberry and low-bush blueberry.

Bird use is varied and dependent upon the local water level. While the surrounding uplands attract many breeding birds, migratory bird use by sandpipers and other shorebirds varies with the amount seasonally exposed mudflats available for foraging.

The Area is managed as an oak barrens and coastal plain marsh reserve, as an aquatic preserve and wetland protection area, and as an ecological reference area. Natural processes will determine the structure of the natural communities of this site, along with prescribed vegetation manipulation in the wetlands and savanna. The Area provide opportunities for research and education on the highest quality native oak barrens and coastal plain marshes.

 

Sohlberg Silver Lake is owned by the DNR and was designated a State Natural Area in 1980.

Source: WDNR