Maggie's Farm

Good question, Sgt. Bob. Happens there's been some interesting work done on that, by analyzing pollen in the sediments of the kettle ponds.

This is probably more information than you want, but here goes, with excerpt from two papers' abstracts (and full citation should you want to track down the papers themselves):

Parshall, T., D. R. Foster, E. Faison, D. MacDonald, and B. C. S. Hansen. 2003. LONG-TERM HISTORY OF VEGETATION AND FIRE IN PITCH PINE–OAK FORESTS ON CAPE COD, MASSACHUSETTS. Ecology 84:736–748. [doi:10.1890/0012-9658(2003)084[0736:LTHOVA]2.0.CO;2]

"We use a paleoecological approach on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to assess landscape-scale variation in pitch pine–oak vegetation and fire occurrence on the pre-European landscape and to determine changes resulting from European land use. Fossil pollen and charcoal preserved in seven lakes confirm a close link between landform and the pre-European distribution of vegetation. Pine forests, dominated by Pinus rigida, were closely associated with xeric outwash deposits, whereas oak–hardwood forests were associated with landforms having finer grained soils and variable topography. In general, fire was much more abundant on Cape Cod than most other areas in New England, but its occurrence varied geographically at two scales. On the western end of Cape Cod, fires were more prevalent in pine forests (outwash) than in oak–hardwood forests (moraines). In contrast, fires were less common on the narrow and north–south trending eastern Cape, perhaps because of physical limits on fire spread.

The most rapid and substantial changes during the past 2000 years were initiated by European settlement, which produced a vegetation mosaic that today is less clearly tied to landform. Quercus and other hardwood trees declined in abundance in the early settlement period in association with land clearance, whereas Pinus has increased, especially during the past century, through natural reforestation and planting of abandoned fields and pastures. An increase in fossil charcoal following European settlement suggests that fire occurrence has risen substantially as a result of forest clearance and other land uses, reaching levels greater than at any time over the past 2000 years. Although fire was undoubtedly used by Native Americans and may have been locally important, we find no clear evidence that humans extensively modified fire regimes or vegetation before European settlement. Instead, climate change over the past several thousand years and European land use over the past 300 years have been the most important agents of change on this landscape."

Marge Winkler and colleagues have specifically done work on Lower Cape ponds including the Wellfleet and Truro ponds I grew up swimming in:

Winkler, M. G., and P. R. Sanford (1995), Coastal Massachusetts pond development: edaphic, climatic, and sea level impacts since deglaciation, Journal of Paleolimnology, 14(3), 311-336, doi:10.1007/bf00682431.

"The earliest pollen and macrofossil assemblages in Group I [some of the ponds in Wellfleet and Truro] pond sediments suggest tundra and spruce-willow parklands before 12 000 yr B.P., boreal forest between 12 000 and 10 500 yr B.P., bog/heath initiation and expansion during the Younger Dryas between 11 000 and 10 000 yr B.P., northern conifer forest between 10 500 and 9500 yr B.P., and establishment of the Cape oak and pitch pine barrens vegetation after 9500 yr B.P."

Hope this helps put some of this discussion into long-term context.