Natural Community Restoration and Management

Kentucky is a biologically diverse state. Geology, soils, topography, assemblages of native plants and animals, along with other factors, combine in unique ways that make up natural communities. Forests, wetlands, glades, grasslands and other habitat types can be classified into categories that are known as natural or ecological communities. High quality natural communities are very rare due to widespread human disturbance but remnants do exist. Commission ecologists use the Natural Areas Inventory to survey the state for the remaining high quality natural communities. Areas containing these communities are glimpses into what Kentucky’s landscape looked like before it was settled and developed. When the commission does locate a significant natural area, efforts are made to protect it, usually as a dedicated state nature preserve.

Once a unique natural area is protected as a state nature preserve, the nature preserve manager’s work begins. It is very rare to secure a new nature preserve in pristine condition. It is the manager’s job to correct the human influences that have adversely affected a site. Invasive plants, fire suppression and poor land-use practices are some of the issues that must be addressed when planning for site restoration.

Volcanic cones

Volcanic cones or cinder cones result from eruptions that explode mostly little pieces of scoria and pyroclastics (both resemble cinders, hence the name of this volcano type) that build up about the vent. These can be relatively short-lived eruptions that create a cone-shaped hill maybe 30 to 400 meters high. Most cinder cones explode only once. Cinder cones may form as side vents on better volcanoes, or occur on their own. Parícutin in Mexico and Sunset Crater in Arizona are examples of cinder cones. In New Mexico, Caja del Rio is a volcanic field of over 60 cinder cones.

Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage

Each spring, the park hosts the Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage, a week-long festival of programs and guided walks and hikes that explore the wondrous diversity of life in the park.

In summer the display continues with brilliant red cardinal flowers, pink turtleheads, Turk’s cap lily, small purple-fringed orchids, bee-balm, butterfly-weed, black-eyed susans, jewel weed, and many others.

By late summer and through the fall, goldenrod, wide-leaved sunflowers, tall ironweed, mountain gentian, monk’s hood, coneflowers, and numerous varieties of asters begin to bloom. Purple umbels of sweet Joe-Pye-weed stretch towards the sky and can reach heights of ten feet.

Trees and shrubs bloom throughout the year too. From February through April the flowers of red maples paint the mountains with a wash of brilliant red. Showy trees such as serviceberry, silverbell, flowering dogwood, redbud, Fraser magnolia, and tuliptree soon follow. Later in summer sourwood, a tree prized for the honey that bees produce from its small bell-shaped, white flowers, begins to bloom. The year ends with the yellow flowers of witch-hazel, which blooms from October through January.

Closer to the ground on shrubs, the small, bight yellow blossoms of spicebush begin to bloom in February and are soon joined by sweetshrub, dog-hobble, and flame azalea. The park is famous for its displays mountain laurel, rhododendron and flame azaleas. The lovely pink and white flowers of mountain laurel bloom in early May through June. Catawba rhododendron, which lives primarily at elevations above 3,500’, reaches it peak of bloom in June. Rosebay rhododendron is in bloom at the lower elevations in June and at mid-elevations during July. Flame azaleas bloom at the low and mid-elevations in April and May. On Gregory Bald the colorful display peaks in late June or early July. On Andrews Bald the peak is usually in early July.

HTC announces world’s first GSM/WiMAX mobile phone

HTC is debatably the most innovative company when it comes to mobile phones, in exacting those running the Windows Mobile operating system. Today, they announced the HTC MAX 4G device that is the world’s first GSM/WiMAX headset. The device will be obtainable in Russia on the Yota Mobile WiMAX network. The device appears similar to the super high-end HTC Touch HD that was recently bare with a large 3.8 inch 800×480 display and touch screen interface. The HTC MAX 4G will hold up the Yota Video network and with the device you can in fact display up to nine TV channels at the same time.


* Qualcomm ESM7206A 528 MHz processor
* Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
* 256MB ROM and 288MB RAM with 8GB Flash drive
* TouchFLO 3D interface
* Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:900/1800/1900 MHz with integrated WiMAX
* Integrated GPS, WiFi, and Bleutooth 2.0
* Standard 3.5mm headset jack
* FM radio
* 5 megapixel camera with VGA front camera for conference calling

Coastal Deserts

You find these deserts on the western edge of continents near the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Massive ocean water currents, think of them as rivers in the ocean, tend to move in a clockwise direction in the Northern Hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. Along the western edge of continents in both hemispheres the source of these currents tends to be found in the poles, so the oceans here are quite cold (the eastern edge of continents, by contrast, tend to be warm). Anyone who has swam in the warm waters off the Carolinas , and then went at the same latitude across North America to the frigid waters of California can prove this to themselves. Cold ocean currents inhibit the formation of rain cloud. Evaporation is a function of heat, so cold oceans do not provide the moisture that warm oceans do. Persistent high pressure systems are also a factor, tending to block incoming storms. Winter fog is often an important source of moisture in these coastal deserts, and very unusual plants and animals have developed to exploit this dew. The Atacama Desert of South America, and Mexico’s Baja California are examples.

Bridalveil Falls

Located about a half-mile northeast of Miners Beach along the Pictured Rocks cliffs.

Bridalveil Falls are only viewable by water or from a distance at Miners Castle. The falls cannot be seen from atop or from the North Country National Scenic Trail.

This is a seasonal waterfall that slows to a trickle in the summer and fall. Bridalveil Falls is often featured on postcards and publications about Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

San Agustin Church and Museum

The San Agustin Church and Museum which is a private museum under the supervision of the Augustinian Friars is housed inside the Old Monastery of the church. The collections include 26 huge oil paintings of saints, the Don Luis Araneta Collection of Antiques, the crypt where Philippine Notables are buried, leads to the refractory with its fine collection of colonial religious art, the Capitulation room where the Spanish surrendered to the Americans in 1898, the Sacristy which house antique carrosas, richly embroidered vestments, a wonderful Saint Michael and famous choir hand carved from Molave wood that dates back to 1614.