How Do You Rate This Publication?       

Title:	An Old-Growth Definition for Evergreen Bay Forests and Related Seral Communities
Author(s):	McKevlin, Martha R.
Date:	1996
Source:	Gen. Tech. Rep. SRS-3. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Southern Research Station. 20 p.
Station ID:	GTR-SRS-003
Description:	This document describes old-growth conditions in an evergreen bay forest stand. Bay forests occur throughout the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains. However, they are considered rare and are present across the landscape in a patchwork mosaic with other forest types in various stages of succession. Bay forests can be found associated with pocosins, Carolina bays and sandhill seeps, stream heads, and stream margins. The dominant species include loblolly-bay, sweetbay, and redbay, hence the name evergreen bay forest. However, several other swamp species associates are common, as well as many highly flammable shrub species. This forest type is subject to infrequent, high intensity, widespread disturbances such as fire. Fire is necessary to the nutrient cycling of this forest type and in conjunction with hydrology, controls succession. These stands are frequently inundated by surface water, resulting in the development of histic soils low in fertility. Alteration of the hydrology by man and catastrophic wildfire are considered to be the greatest threats to the existence of bay forests.
	View and Print this Publication (147 KB)
Pristine Version:	An uncaptured or "pristine" version of this publication is available. It has not been subjected to OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and therefore does not have any errors in the text. However it is a larger file size and some people may experience long download times. The "pristine" version of this publication is available here: View and Print the PRISTINE copy of this Publication (6.5 MB)
Publication Notes:	We recommend that you also print this page and attach it to the printout of the article, to retain the full citation information. This article was written and prepared by U.S. Government employees on official time, and is therefore in the public domain. Our on-line publications are scanned and captured using Adobe Acrobat. During the capture process some typographical errors may occur. Please contact the SRS Webmaster, srswebmaster@fs.fed.us if you notice any errors which make this publication unuseable. You may send email to pubrequest@fs.fed.us to request a hard copy of this publication. (Please specify exactly which publication you are requesting and your mailing address.)
	Get the latest version of the Adobe Acrobat reader or Acrobat Reader for Windows with Search and Accessibility