2.0 Environment The survey area is in Cheatham County and travers- es Sycamore Creek, a tributary of the Cumberland River. The project area lies within the Western High- land Rim Level IV ecoregion, which is part of the larger Interior Plateau Level III ecoregion (Figure 2.1). The Western Highland Rim consists of rolling hills with elevations up to 305 m. Native vegetation includes oak-hickory forests, although iron-ore mining in the 1800s deforested most of the region. Recent efforts have led to secondary regrowth of for- ests, as well as the cultivation of hay, tobacco, cattle, and Saddle Mules (Griffith et al. 2001). The Interior Plateau Level III ecoregion extends from southern Indiana and Ohio to northern Alabama. The eleva- tion is lower than the Appalachian ecoregions to the east, and the region has the most diverse fish fauna in Tennessee (Griffith et al. 2001). The surficial geology immediately underlying the survey area includes Mississippian and Devo- nian-Silurian formations (Figure 2.2). St. Louis and Warsaw limestones, which contain knappable ma- terials, largely underlie the project area. Consistent with the project’s location in the Western Highland Rim ecoregion, 66 percent of the soils are formed along very steep slopes (Figure 2.3; Table 2.1). An- other 60 percent of soils are formed along rock out- crops or contain gravel, consistent with the iron-ore mining that was performed in the 1800s (Natural Resources Conservation Service [NRCS] 2019). The current survey area consists of two envi- ronmental categories: open pasture and wooded slopes (Figures 2.4 and 2.5). The open pastures were once used for cultivating tobacco and most recently used as a pasture for horses and mules. At the time of Brockington’s survey, the pasture consisted of mowed grasses with slightly sloped soils between five to twelve percent. The wooded slopes make up most of the survey area and consist of mixed hardwood-pine forests. Steep slopes reach up to sixty percent and feature 100 m cliffs overlooking Sycamore Creek (Figure 2.6).
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