Natural Resources
Conservation Service
Ecological site F136XY710NC
Basic upland hardpan woodland, seasonally wet and seasonally dry
Accessed: 12/03/2024
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): 136X–Southern Piedmont
This area is in North Carolina (29 percent), Georgia (27 percent), Virginia (21 percent), South Carolina (16 percent), and Alabama (7 percent). It makes up about 64,395 square miles (166,865 square kilometers). (Ag Bulletin 296)
The northeast-southwest trending Piedmont ecoregion comprises a transitional area between the mostly mountainous ecoregions of the Appalachians to the northwest and the relatively flat coastal plain to the southeast. It is a complex mosaic of Precambrian and Paleozoic metamorphic and igneous rocks with moderately dissected irregular plains and some hills. (EPA Ecoregions descriptions)
ADD APPROPRIATE ECOREGION DESCRIPTION(S)
Classification relationships
A PROVISIONAL ECOLOGICAL SITE is a conceptual grouping of soil map unit components within a Major Land Resource Area (MLRA) based on the similarities in response to management. Although there may be wide variability in the productivity of the soils grouped into a Provisional Site, the soil vegetation interactions as expressed in the State and Transition Model are similar and the management actions required to achieve objectives, whether maintaining the existing ecological state or managing for an alternative state, are similar. Provisional Sites are likely to be refined into more precise group during the process of meeting the APPROVED ECOLOGICAL SITE DESCRIPTION criteria.
This PROVISIONAL ECOLOGICAL SITE has been developed to meet the standards established in the National Ecological Site Handbook. The information associated with this ecological site does not meet the Approved Ecological Site Description Standard, but it has been through a Quality Control and Quality Assurance processes to assure consistency and completeness. Further investigations, reviews and correlations are necessary before it becomes an Approved Ecological Site Description.
Ecological site concept
This ecological site occurs in the thermic soil temperature regime of the Southern Piedmont MLRA and represents a range of habitats that are generally small and insular, occur over basic or mafic rock, and have soil rooting depths that limit forest trees and thus are very xeric in character. Nonetheless, they are more extensive on the landscape than acid glades and barrens. In some cases this type is a consequence of montmorillonitic clay soils (shrink-swell hardpans) derived from mafic volcanic rocks on sites with thin, rocky soils (primarily on ridges in the western Uwharrie Mountains). A similar situation occurs with glades over diabase sills in north-central North Carolina. In other cases open woodland occurs on steep rock outcrops of mafic rock which have as much as 70% surface substrate cover of exposed bedrock, and these soils have moderately high levels of calcium and magnesium. These communities also occur on soils derived from mafic rock (metavolcanics of the Carolina Slate Belt), the substrate containing abundant slate fragments, which makes it sufficiently unstable as to inhibit woody plant growth through mechanical downslope movement of slabs and fragments.
Table 1. Dominant plant species
| Tree |
(1) Quercus phellos |
|---|---|
| Shrub |
(1) Acer leucoderme |
| Herbaceous |
(1) Piptochaetium avenaceum |
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