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Ecological restoration

Informally Refereed

Abstract

The long history of human settlement, agriculture, and industry at the Savannah River Site (SRS) has created extensive opportunities for ecological restoration. Two hundred years of farming, drainage, dam construction, stream channeling, fire protection, subsistence hunting and fishing, exotic animal and plant introduction, and selective timber harvesting have caused major changes in the SRS landscape (table 3.4). These activities degraded the native plant and animal communities by removing species for commercial use (e.g., longleaf pine, white oaks; see appendix for scientific names of plants) or subsistence needs (e.g., white-tailed deer, wild turkey [Meleagris gallopavo]; see table 4.24 for scientific names of mammals). Tillage eliminated native vegetation locally, and exotics (e.g., kudzu, hogs, and cattle) competed with or damaged native species. Activities also altered natural hydrologic and wildfire regimes essential to the maintenance of native communities. Baseline surveys of the flora and fauna at SRS in the 1950s provide a measure of the degree of human impact (e.g., Batson and Kelley 1953; Freeman 1954; Freeman 1955).

Citation

Barton, Christopher D.; Blake, John I.; Imm, Donald W. 2005. Ecological restoration. In: Kilgo, J.C.; Blake, J.I. eds. Ecology and management of a forested landscape. Washington, DC: Island Press. 84-102. Chapter 3.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/21311