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The escarpment is a tilting shelf of siliceous
shale - a form of sedimentary rock that is harder
than the surrounding limestone - which extends
into northern Saskatchewan, where it forms similar
upland areas. Although only 756 metres at its
highest edge on the northeastern side, relative
to the plains that stretch away from it on all
sides, it is a mountain. The park includes a
diversity of landscapes: evergreen and hardwood
forests, rolling hills, valleys, lakes and streams.
A highland plateau in the centre of North America,
the park is a crossroads where prairie, boreal
and deciduous life colonies intermingle. Manitoba
is famous for thousands of prairie potholes
- lakes of all sizes that were left as glaciers
retreated - which are now havens for waterfowl,
fish, birdlife and insects. Riding Mountain
Park is one of the few places in habitable parts
of Manitoba where these prairie potholes have
not been drained off and plowed under.
Three distinctive vegetation
zones are recognized, although they do, in fact,
intermix. In the south aspen parkland, open,
rough fescue grasslands and aspen groves, edge
the eastern side of Lake Audy. Bordering the
aspen parkland is a zone of mixed-wood forest
containing various combinations of coniferous
(white spruce and balsam fir) and deciduous
(white birch, aspen, elm, maple and balsam poplar)
species. Very few stands of eastern deciduous
forest are left in southern Manitoba, because
most have been destroyed in clearing land for
agriculture. But here you see a rich remnant
of this complex ecological zone. In the surrounding
forest, there is an understory of vines, berry
bushes, mushrooms, and flowers that are at the
height of their beauty amidst the prairie grasses
in June and July. Areas that are mostly boreal
forests, in the extreme north of this natural
region, appear as seemingly endless stretches
of black spruce muskeg that dominate much of
the flat, poorly drained land. This combination
of communities in the Riding Mountain portion
of the escarpment forms a distinctive Canadian
habitat that is unique in the world.
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