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[Images] Five photos of different landscape

Compass issue 10
Download issue 11 PDF

Compass is a quarterly publication of the USDA Forest Service's Southern Research Station (SRS). As part of the Nation's largest forestry research organization -- USDA Forest Service Research and Development -- SRS serves 13 Southern States and beyond. The Station's 130 scienists work in more than 20 units located across the region at Federal laboratories, universites, and experimental forests.



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Issue 11

Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory

Established in 1933 as the Coweeta Experimental Forest, the laboratory today represents the longest continuous environmental study on any landscape in North America, as well as one of the oldest gauged watershed sites in the world. Located in the Nantahala Mountain Range in western North Carolina, the 5,400-acre laboratory is made up of two adjacent, bowl-shaped basins containing several well-defined watersheds and more than 45 miles of stream. It is covered with a deciduous forest typical of the Southeastern United States, with a mix of oak, hickory, and rhododendron, as well as scattered groups of pitch pine and eastern hemlock, and an understory of dogwood, maple, and birch.





Weir at Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory. (Photo by Rodney Kindlund, U.S. Forest Service)
Weir at Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory. (Photo by Rodney Kindlund, U.S. Forest Service)