Characteristics and Classification of Southern Appalachian Spruce-Fir Forests

Watson-Cook, Emily

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 ecotones containing spruce and fir 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 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.

Characteristics and Classification of Southern Appalachian Spruce-Fir Forests

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