The most common soil textures are sand and sandy loam. Tallgrass prairie was restricted to flat outwash deposits, especially where streams or wetlands did not provide fire barriers. Oak forest was also common throughout, especially in the more dissected ice-contact topography and on the steep end moraine to the north. Without fire, all the oak openings have closed in to become closed-canopy oak forests. All of the upland prairie and most of the upland forests have been converted to agriculture.
Forest remains on the steeper end moraines and ice-contact topography.
Residential development is encroaching on many of the remaining upland forests. The subsection now supports closed-canopy oak forests due to fire suppression. The oak ecosystems of this and adjacent subsections were classified and described by Archambault et al . Tallgrass prairie was originally quite extensive, but prairie lands were among the first farmed in Michigan. Oak savannas have been either destroyed by agriculture or heavily degraded by fire suppression.