Chapter 4 Habitats
4.4.14 Dry Longleaf Pine Communities 4.4.14.1 Ecosystem Description
Dry Longleaf Pine communities range from moist sites to excessively drained coarse sands that produce near-desert conditions for plants. Longleaf Pine communities are scattered throughout the Sandhills and Coastal Plain ecoregions and extend into the southern Piedmont ecoregion. They were once the most abundant communities in the Coastal Plain, occupying most of the land that was not swamp or pocosin, but now occur as scattered remnants. With frequent fire, Longleaf Pine strongly dominates the canopy, which may range from sparse to fairly dense but is seldom completely closed. Classification of the Natural Communities of North Carolina, Fourth Approximation (Schafale 2024) has several subtypes described for this theme. • Dry Piedmont Longleaf Pine Communities • Mesic Pine Savanna (Sandhills, Coastal Plain, Lumbee subtypes) • Pine/Scrub Oak Sandhill (BlackJack, Mixed Oak, Sandhills Mesic Transition, Coastal Plain Mesic Transition, Clay/Rock Hilltop, Coastal Fringe, Northern subtypes) • Sand Barren (Typic, Coastal Fringe subtypes) • Xeric Sandhill Scrub (Typic, Coastal Fringe subtypes) These communities have in common a regime of frequent, low-intensity natural fires that once crept across vast areas of the landscape. The ground cover is dominated by wiregrass and has a variety of other herbs and low shrubs. The structure and composition of these communities at present strongly depend on the extent to which these fires have continued or have been replaced by prescribed fire. In the Sandhill community types, a sparse midstory of scrub oaks is present, with the species varying with types and variants. In the mesic pine flatwoods type, oaks are absent, and the community has a distinctly two-layered structure of trees and grass. The herb layer is often very diverse. With removal of fire, scrub oaks in the Sandhills community types and shrubs and hardwood trees in the flatwoods community types become dense and out-compete the herbs. Piedmont Longleaf Pine forests are more poorly known. Most existing examples have a mixed canopy of Longleaf, Loblolly, and Shortleaf pine, often mixed with Southern Red Oak and Post Oak. These communities probably once also had a grassy understory, but it is not known if wiregrass was once dominant. 4.4.14.2 Location of Habitat The best remaining examples of the dry Longleaf Pine habitat in the Coastal Plain are on the military bases of Fort Liberty, Camp Lejeune, Sunny Point, and Cherry Point, the Croatan National Forest, Holly Shelter Game Land, Goose Creek Game Land, and Sandhills Game Land. Most of the acreages on the above sites are in fair-to-good condition, due to regular prescribed burning. There are many other sites on both public and private lands where little-to-no burning
4 - 316
2025 NC Wildlife Action Plan
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator