Chapter 4 Habitats
extirpating the American Chestnut. Some more southern or low-elevation species may migrate into these communities. Impacts from higher temperatures, drought, fire, and wind damage will likely lead to other community types, or different suites of species, more suited to the change in climate due to competitive interactions of species in the seed bank during succession. Unfortunately, this may lead to a greater need for nonnative invasive species control after stand replacing disturbances, natural or man-made. Drought. Drought may allow pine forests to expand at the expense of oak forests; it will also allow oak forests to expand to higher elevations and into more mesic sites now occupied by cove forests. The overall extent of oak forests may increase moderately. These communities should be able to move to higher elevations, while they are unlikely to lose much acreage at lower elevations. Management. Homogeneity of stand age has resulted in decreasing habitat for bird species that rely on diverse understory development (lack of understory development). Increased wind damage, fire damage, and drought mortality will result in more canopy gaps and a younger average tree age but may benefit some herbaceous species. Invasives. Princess Tree and Tree-of-heaven are threats. Gypsy Moths and exotic tree diseases (Sudden Oak Death, Chestnut Blight) are potential future threats. Fire Ants may be able to invade these communities and cause significant impacts if temperatures become warm enough. 4.4.13.4 Climate Change Compared to Other Threats Comparing climate change to other ecosystem threats can help define short- and long-term conservation actions and recommendations. Montane oak forests will likely be resilient to the effects of climate change and are expected to continue to occupy most of the sites they currently occur in and to remain the most abundant communities. Development remains the most severe threat to these communities. Table 4.4.13-1 summarizes the comparison of climate change with other existing threats.
Table 4.4.13-1 Climate change compared to other threats to montane oak forests.
Rank Order
Threat
Comments
1 According to Taylor and Kurtz (2008) , the conversion of forest to development is the leading land use change occurring in the Blue Ridge Mountains (DeWan et al. 2010) . 2 Full scale high-grading and poor logging practices of the past have had very negative impacts on the structure and composition of the resulting succession but ensuring logging practices are geared
Development
Logging/ Exploitation
toward restoration rather than purely short-term financial objectives will remove the negative impacts of logging.
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2025 NC Wildlife Action Plan
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