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Middle Tippecanoe Plains

↑About the Middle Tippecanoe Plains

The Middle Tippecanoe Plains are a relatively round region in northern to central Indiana, centering around the Tippecanoe river, but not including the entirety of its length.

This region is a level to rolling plain featuring dunes, terminal moraines, lake flats, and scattered potholes. Soils are diverse, but are mostly well-drained soils rich in organic matter. Although this region has far fewer lakes than the lake country to the northeast, it contains Indiana's second largest lake, Lake Maxinkuckee.

This region was originally covered mostly in oak-hickory forest with some swamp forest, and scattered areas of prairie. Most of the forests here have been cleared for agriculture, which is almost all corn, soybean, and livestock farming. There is also some residential development, although most of this region is sparsely populated, and there are only small towns throughout. Throughout most of the region, what little forest cover remains is in the form of small, isolated woodlots and a small riparian buffer along the Tippecanoe river. However there a large, unbroken tract of forest in the west of this region, much of which is protected public land in Tippecanoe River State Park. This region was left forested not for conservation purposes but because it has unusually sandy soils which were poorly-suited for farming, and in places, it also has more rugged terrain, so it is not typical of this region.

This region is bordered to the northeast by the Northern Indiana Lake Country, to the north by the Battle Creek/Elkhart Outwash Plain, to the northwest and west by the Sand Area, to the south by the Loamy High Lime Till Plains, and in the east of this region, to the south by the Clayey High Lime Till Plains.

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↑References

1. Woods, A.J, Omernik, J.M., Brockman, C.S., Gerber, T.D., Hosteter, W.D., Azevedo, S.H. "Ecoregions of Indiana and Ohio (Poster)", US Geological Survey (1998) Web.