气候变化领域集成服务门户

Over the last century, the range of spruce-fir forest was diminished by road construction, fire, livestock grazing, recreational development and timber harvesting.

The damage to the spruce-fir forest from the intensity of logging in the early 1900s on the slopes of the Black Mountains and other high-elevation ranges in Western North Carolina was long-lasting. 

In addition to the extraction of trees that left slopes bare, blazes set by rail sparks and slash fires to remove flammable waste profoundly damaged the soil and the ability of red spruce and Fraser fir to regenerate.

“Spruce grows slowly and needs lots of sunlight,” said Crockett. “So, once the spruce was logged, hardwoods sprouted up in their place. Especially at relatively lower elevations, spruce just lost the battle.”

The forests are also vulnerable to other looming threats, such as land use changes and development, air pollution, exotic plants, invasive pests and diseases.

In fact, the spruce-fir forest has already been impacted by the lethal balsam woolly adelgid. 

The pest was first spotted on Mount Mitchell in 1957, imported from Europe decades earlier. The adelgid has a disastrous impact on Fraser firs, stunting the tree at a modest height before it eventually succumbs to the pest. 

Pests aside, a warmer climate, changing rainfall patterns and a longer growing season are expected to aggravate the impact of harmful insects and the spread of invasive plants. As a result, it’s harder to restore these unique islands of habitat as they retreat to higher elevations and continue to cede ground to hardwoods. 

SAHC’s Haw Orchard Ridge is one small component of the 65,000-acre conservation area known as the Greater Roan Highlands Landscape. 

The project area encompasses a mosaic of private and public land holdings in high elevations in Avery and Mitchell counties in North Carolina and Carter County in Tennessee. The project, home to one of the richest collections of biodiversity in North America, includes 1,500 native plant species. 

“The area has always been a destination that people have loved, and there’s a sense that the Roan is really special,” Crockett said. 

“There’s always been a strong stewardship ethic among the people who’ve lived here — and I don’t just mean European history. Roan is a special place to the Cherokee. The people who live here have learned how to have a small impact on the land.”

While roughly 20,000 acres of the Greater Roan Highlands Landscape is open to the public, the majority of the land within the landscape is conserved and managed by private landowners or conservation organizations. The area faces the risk of development as more people move to the area, Crockett said.

In 2021, SAHC announced its biggest land donation to date in the Roan Highlands, a 7,500-acre tract donated by conservation philanthropist Tim Sweeney.  

In all, the SAHC will manage roughly 12,000 acres in the Roan Highlands.

“The whole idea of conserving relatively large quantities of land that are connected is that, because of the uncertainty of climate change, we don’t know exactly what species are going to be here or what the habitat will look like,” Crockett said.

“We can model and try to figure it out, but the idea is that we’ve conserved enough diversity of habitat and species that there’s going to be something that can take over.  What that’ll be, what it’ll look like, how that’ll function is all beyond what we know now.” 

Eventually, the saplings planted on Haw Orchard Ridge and other pockets of forest will form an ecological bridge of intact conifers connecting the archipelago of spruce-fir.

“In theory, there will be enough conifer components for animals to move from one place to another even if it’s not solid spruce,” Crockett said. “That’s the hope.”

Yet, the impact of planting trees now and the fate of the animals that depend on the unique havens of habitat may not be obvious for years, perhaps decades.

“That’s the funny thing about being a biologist: You’re constantly doing stuff you may not see in your lifetime.”

“That’s the funny thing about being a biologist: You’re constantly doing stuff you may not see in your lifetime,” said Crockett, who has faith in the science and a conservation ethos that presumes bigger landscapes of forest are more resilient to climate change than isolated islands of land. 

More contiguous forest acreage means more habitat, more food, more mates and a wider gene pool. 

“That just goes back to the basics of conservation in that one big preserve is more valuable than several small preserves,” she said.

“On one hand, we are protecting these incredibly high-elevation and climate-sensitive habitats, but their protection also makes the whole region more climate-resilient.”

Photos by Jack Igelman