I was very privileged to work with dedicated colleagues to develop a coarse-level metrics assessment for Wisconsin oak woodlands recently. We also developed a similar assessment for oak openings (open savannas), but oak woodlands are, in my mind, special, because oak woodlands are often overlooked, misunderstood, and shoehorned into other community types. High quality oak woodlands with fully intact herbaceous sods are probably as rare or rarer than mesic prairie, but we don’t know, because we lack data! I hope this will be a valuable tool for prioritizing and establishing condition baselines and subsequently monitoring oak woodland sites. This assessment is rooted in ecological integrity and recognition that the intactness of the herbaceous vegetation is at least co-equal in importance to arboreal characteristics oak woodlands.

Old-growth examples of that herbaceous vegetation tend to be low in stature (even at mesic sites with fine-textured soils) and have abundant forbs that flower throughout the growing season. The best sites are where fence grazing had the least impact and the action of wind has continued to remove smothering leaf litter in the absence of fire–low knolls surround by water and/or open peatlands and wind-exposed slopes and ridgetops. The best restored examples are burned frequently in the dormant season.

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