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Natural Resources
Conservation Service
Ecological site PX133A00X010
Northern Hardwood Forest
Accessed: 08/17/2024
General information
Provisional. A provisional ecological site description has undergone quality control and quality assurance review. It contains a working state and transition model and enough information to identify the ecological site.
MLRA notes
Major Land Resource Area (MLRA): 133A–Southern Coastal Plain
This MLRA (shown in orange in the figure above) is in Alabama (26 percent), Mississippi (24 percent), Georgia (21 percent), Florida (8 percent), North Carolina (7 percent), Virginia (5 percent), South Carolina (4 percent), Tennessee (4 percent), and Louisiana (1 percent). It makes up about 106,485 square miles (275,930 square kilometers). It is the largest MLRA in the U.S. The city of Alexandria, Virginia, is at the northernmost tip of the area. The MLRA also includes Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Petersburg, Virginia; Rocky Mount, Goldsboro, Fayetteville, and Lumberton, North Carolina; Florence, Sumter, and Orangeburg, South Carolina; Albany and Tifton, Georgia; Tallahassee, Florida; Tuskegee, Eufaula, Selma, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Savannah, Tennessee; Corinth, Starkville, Grenada, Meridian, Hattiesburg, and McComb, Mississippi; and Bogalusa, Louisiana. Interstates 95, 64, 85, 40, 20, 20/59, 26, 16, 75, 10, 65, 59, and 55 cross this area from north to south. This area extends from Virginia to Louisiana and Mississippi, but it is almost entirely within three sections of the Coastal Plain Province of the Atlantic Plain. The northern part is in the Embayed Section, the middle part is in the Sea Island Section, and the southern part is in the East Gulf Coastal Plain Section. This MLRA is strongly dissected into nearly level and gently undulating valleys and gently sloping to steep uplands. Stream valleys generally are narrow in their upper reaches but become broad and have widely meandering stream channels as they approach the coast. Elevation ranges from 80 to 655 feet (25 to 200 meters), increasing gradually from the lower Coastal Plain northward. Local relief is mainly 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters), but it is 80 to 165 feet (25 to 50 meters) in some of the more deeply dissected areas.
Classification relationships
ATTENTION: This ecological site meets the requirements for PROVISIONAL. A provisional ecological site is established after ecological site concepts are developed and an initial state-and-transition model is drafted. A provisional ecological site typically will include literature reviews, land use history information, legacy data, and must include some soils data, ocular estimates for canopy and/or species composition by weight, and some line-point intercept information. A provisional ecological site provides the conceptual framework of soil-site correlation for the development of the ESD. For more information about this ecological site, please contact your local NRCS office.
Ecological site concept
This system is comprised of dry hardwood forests largely dominated by oaks, ranging from sandy glacial and outwash deposits of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Long Island, New York, south to the Coastal Plain portions of Maryland and Virginia south to about the James River. In the northern half of the range, conditions can grade to dry-mesic, reflected in the local abundance of Fagus grandifolia. These forests occur on acidic, sandy to gravelly soils with a thick duff layer, often with an ericaceous shrub layer. This system grades into other hardwood types of the northeastern U.S. as one moves inland. In Delaware and New York these coastal forests are apparently distinct (fauna, flora and substrate are distinct) from more inland forests. The southern part of this type's range overlaps with Atlantic Coastal Plain Mesic Hardwood Forest (CES203.242); where they overlap, they are separated based on moisture regime, with the drier forests (often with an ericaceous shrub layer) going to this type. Descriptions of Ecological Systems for
Modeling of LANDFIRE Biophysical Settings
Ecological Systems
06 October 2007
Descriptions provided to TNC and LANDFIRE by NatureServe
Table 1. Dominant plant species
Tree |
(1) Fagus grandifolia |
---|---|
Shrub |
(1) Quercus alba |
Herbaceous |
Not specified |
Legacy ID
F133AY010NC
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