Characteristics and classification of southern Appalachian spruce-fir forests

Public Deposited
Analytics

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
Request Version for Screen Reader
Last Modified
  • June 12, 2020
Creator
  • Watson-Cook, Emily Layne
    • Affiliation: UNC Institute for the Environment
Abstract
  • Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forests are relatively uncommon communities that occur at high elevations in the mountains of North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and West Virginia. These forests are relicts of the Pleistocene left over from a period of glaciation during which spruce-fir forests were distributed contiguously throughout the Appalachians. Previous examinations of the southern Appalachian spruce and fir ecotone have indicated the importance of elevation as a driver of species composition. Dominant tree species exhibit a gradient from northern hardwoods to red spruce (Picea rubens) to Fraser fir (Abies fraseri) as elevation increases. These communities have been sampled by the Carolina Vegetation Survey (CVS), a large-scale research program aimed at inventory and monitoring of the natural vegetation of the Carolinas. I obtained spruce-fir forest data from the CVS database and used agglomerative hierarchical clustering methods to group plots based on species cover class values, as defined by CVS protocol. I examined community composition and environmental characteristics of these clusters and used them to identify distinct plant community types. I made reference to previous descriptions by the U.S. National Vegetation Classification and the North Carolina Natural Heritage Community Classification (Fourth Approximation) during the classification process. This was done with the goal of evaluating and improving upon these previous spruce-fir community type classifications. Given that future changes in climate are anticipated to affect the distribution of spruce-fir forests, further knowledge of their dynamics and distribution is needed to inform conservation planning.
Date of publication
Keyword
DOI
Resource type
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Note
  • Funding: None
Advisor
  • Peet, Robert K.
Degree
  • Bachelor of Science
Academic concentration
  • Environmental Science
Honors level
  • Honors
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Graduation year
  • 2017
Language
  • English
Date uploaded
  • April 28, 2017

Relations

Parents:

This work has no parents.

In Collection:

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details Watson-Cook-MS-v2.pdf 2019-05-18 Public Download
file details Watson-Cook-MS-v2.pdf 2020-06-12 Public Download