Characteristics and Classification of Southern Appalachian Spruce-Fir Forests

Undergraduates: Emily Watson-Cook, Robet K. Peet

Faculty Advisor: Robert Peet
Department: Environmental Science

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Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forests, one of the most threatened ecosystems in the southeastern U.S, are relatively uncommon communities that occur at high elevations in the mountains of North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Previous examinations of the southern Appalachian spruce-fir ecotone have revealed past variation in its distribution with elevation, with apparent high points being reached during temperature maximums. These communities have been sampled as part of the Carolina Vegetation Survey (CVS), a large-scale research program aimed at the inventory and monitoring of the natural vegetation of the Carolinas. We obtained spruce-fir forest data through the CVS database and utilized agglomerative hierarchical clustering methods to group plots based on species cover class values, as defined by CVS protocol. We then examined community composition and environmental characteristics of these groupings, which we used to describe an appropriate community type for each. This was done with the goal of evaluating and improving upon current spruce-fir community type classifications under the U.S. National Vegetation Classification. Given that future changes in climate are anticipated to affect the distribution of spruce-fir forests, further knowledge of their dynamics and distribution is imperative to conservation efforts.