State guide

Michigan Nature Guide

Michigan is a two-peninsula state defined by the Great Lakes that wrap around it on nearly every side, lake-moderating its weather and funneling vast migrations along its shores. Its nature spans the southern Midwest hardwoods and farmland of the lower peninsula's lakeshore, the great northern hardwood-conifer forests of the north and Upper Peninsula, and the dunes, jack-pine plains, and boreal edge that give it specialties found almost nowhere else. The humid continental climate of USDA zones 4a through 6b yields a hard northern winter, an explosive lake-driven spring migration, a warm fruit-belt summer, and a sweeping sugar-maple-and-aspen fall.