The North Central Hardwood Forests are a temperate broadleaf and mixed forests ecoregion (no. 51 in the EPA Level III ecoregions of the United States) in central Minnesota, central Wisconsin, and northwestern Lower Michigan, embedded between (clockwise) the Western Corn Belt Plains in the south, the Northern Glaciated Plains, the Red River Valley, the , and the Northern Lakes and Forests (ecoregion 50, approx. identical with WWF's Western Great Lakes forests). It forms the northern part of the upper Midwest forest-savanna transition, which also includes regions 52 (Driftless Area) and 53 (Southeastern Wisconsin Till Plains).
