COSAM News Articles 2013 September SCB longleaf pine restoration tour

SCB longleaf pine restoration tour

Published: 09/23/2013

On Saturday, September 21, BioSci’s own Dr. Sharon Hermann led a tour of campus sites that are being used as demonstration areas for restoration of longleaf pine forests. Two hardy students braved the rainy conditions to learn from her expertise as a Restoration Ecologist. Longleaf pine forest, a dominant forest type over most of the Coastal Plain in the Southeastern United States, has been mostly lost over the past century (perhaps 3% of the original forest remains) because of logging and exclusion of fire from the landscape. Dr. Hermann showed us a site on campus that still has 18 old-growth longleaf pines (with ages over 200 years) along with other areas that she and colleagues have used for restoration research.