cadyhansen
Longleaf Pine Forest
This photo is of the beautiful longleaf pine forest right on UNCW campus! The longleaf pine is the dominant tree species of the ecosystem, however many rare plants and animals reside there as well! Among them, the southeastern fox squirrel, the northern pine snake, and the red cockaded woodpecker (NC Longleaf Coalition). This longleaf pine forest is what ecologists call a fire-climax community, in that the species in this ecosystem are not only resistant to fire, but also dependent upon it. Longleaf pines require bare mineral soil for their seeds to germinate, and they have adaptive strategies for surviving fires during the early stages of their development. Most notably, they establish a long tap root below ground and spend three to fifteen years in a grass stage, with long needles that protect the terminal bud from these fires. Although longleaf pine forests used to cover almost 90 million acres, unfortunately today only about 3 million acres across the south contain long leaf forests (Way, 2006).
www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/geography-environmen... (Alfred Way)
www.nclongleaf.org/llPineForests.html (NC Longleaf Coalition)
Longleaf Pine Forest
This photo is of the beautiful longleaf pine forest right on UNCW campus! The longleaf pine is the dominant tree species of the ecosystem, however many rare plants and animals reside there as well! Among them, the southeastern fox squirrel, the northern pine snake, and the red cockaded woodpecker (NC Longleaf Coalition). This longleaf pine forest is what ecologists call a fire-climax community, in that the species in this ecosystem are not only resistant to fire, but also dependent upon it. Longleaf pines require bare mineral soil for their seeds to germinate, and they have adaptive strategies for surviving fires during the early stages of their development. Most notably, they establish a long tap root below ground and spend three to fifteen years in a grass stage, with long needles that protect the terminal bud from these fires. Although longleaf pine forests used to cover almost 90 million acres, unfortunately today only about 3 million acres across the south contain long leaf forests (Way, 2006).
www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/geography-environmen... (Alfred Way)
www.nclongleaf.org/llPineForests.html (NC Longleaf Coalition)