4.4 Terrestrial Communities
4.4.9 Mesic Forests 4.4.9.1 Ecosystem Description
Mesic forests occur on sites that are moist but not wet. Mesic sites are among the most favorable environments for plant growth. Tey tend to support dense forests dominated by moisture-loving non-wetland trees such as beech, Tulip Poplar, and Northern Red Oak. Tey usually have well-developed understory, shrub, and herb layers. Tey often contain species that are common in the mountain parts of the state or farther north but are rare in the southern Piedmont and Coastal Plain. Some species may be disjunct long distances from cooler areas. At least some of these disjuncts are remnants of wider distributions in the past, such as during the cooler, moister climate of the Ice Age. • Mesic mixed hardwood forests in the Piedmont are generally on north-facing slopes, sheltered ravines, or high terraces on the edges of foodplains. In the Coastal Plain, mesic forests occur in similar sites and also on moist portions of broad upland fats and on small island ridges surrounded by swamps. Tese sites are naturally sheltered from the fres that are a major natural shaper of vegetation in the Coastal Plain. • Basic mesic forests are much rarer than the mesic type and occur on soils that are neutral to slightly basic in pH. Tey are more diverse than the mesic mixed hardwood forests and they have species that require high pH. Te basic mesic forest subtype often has rare and disjunct plant species and both variants of basic mesic forest (marl outcrop and terrace slope) are rare because of the scarcity of basic substrates on the Coastal Plain ( Schafale and Weakley 1990 ). Te 2005 WAP describes the Piedmont ecoregion and Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain ecoregion Mesic Forest as a priority habitat (see Chapter 5) (NCWRC 2005) . 4.4.9.2 Location of Habitat Te Coastal Plain and Piedmont subtypes cannot be separated by any particular species, but difer in their overall fora. In the Piedmont, mesic mixed hardwood forest commu- nities occur on mesic sites that have typically acidic soils. Good examples can be found at Umstead State Park, Duke Forest, Hill Demonstration Forest, Raven Rock State Park, and Eno River State Park in the central Piedmont and also examples in parts of Uwharrie National Forest. Basic mesic forest communities are scattered across the Piedmont; good examples are found in Caswell Game Land, Uwharrie National Forest, and Raven Rock State Park. Several distinctive variants of these subtypes are recognized in the Coastal Plain, includ- ing the swamp island, mesic fat, and bluf/slope variants of mesic mixed hardwood forest, and the terrace slope and marl outcrop variants of basic mesic forests. Examples of the
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2015 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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