Inventory & Monitoring at Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Wetlands at Cuyahoga Valley National Park
Wetlands at Cuyahoga Valley National Park

NPS

Located in northeastern Ohio, Cuyahoga Valley National Park encompasses over 32,800 acres of relatively undeveloped open space between the metropolitan areas of Cleveland and Akron within the Cuyahoga Valley. The park was established as a National Recreation Area in 1974 and was re-designated as Cuyahoga Valley National Park in 2000. The Cuyahoga River was designated as one of 14 American Heritage Rivers in 1998.
The park protects a complex of fluvial landforms, including a 22-mile corridor of the Cuyahoga River, its floodplain, and adjacent ravines that contain nearly 200 miles of perennial tributaries. The park has identified nearly 1,490 wetlands of varying size within its boundaries, encompassing approximately 1,900 acres. The four, most-common types of wetlands are wet meadow, marsh, scrub/shrub and forest. CUVA supports a variety of habitats, but forest dominates vegetation cover. Mixed forests cover approximately 27,000 acres (80 percent) with the oak-hickory association being the most common. The forests can be broadly categorized as upland or bottomland, based on landscape position. In upland forests, the dominant vegetation is a mix of hardwood trees, mainly oaks, hickories (Carya spp.), maples (Acer spp.), and American beech (Fagus grandifolia). Bottomland forests typically support an overstory of ashes (Fraxinus spp.), eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides), sycamore (Platanus occidentalis), box elder (Acer negundo), Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra), silver maple (Acer saccharinum), and red maple.

Natural Resource Updates

Loading results...
    Tags: htln

    Source: Data Store Saved Search 3507 (results presented are a subset). To search for additional information, visit the Data Store.

    Source: Data Store Collection 4260 (results presented are a subset). To search for additional information, visit the Data Store.


    Attention Citizen Scientists - Help document the park's biodiversity using iNaturalist.
    iNaturalist is a mobile and web-based tool where people can document the plants, animals, and other species they see and the iNaturalist community works together to identify what was observed.

    Check out the links below for other interesting science information about your park:

    Air Quality in Parks
    Learn about the air quality at your park and how it has changed over time.

    NPS Geodiversity Atlas
    An interactive map to explore the full variety of natural geologic (rocks, minerals, sediments, fossils, landforms, and physical processes) and soil resources and processes that occur in your park.

    NPSpecies
    Find out what plants and animals are present in your park or other parks.

    NPS Datastore
    Search the NPS DataStore for more information about the park.

    Last updated: December 12, 2018