Provisional, Forested Ecological Sites in the Northern Appalachians and Their State-and-Transition Models

Abstract

• The identification of unique areas of vegetative potential across the Northern Appalachians is complicated by a long land-use history of vegetation management.
• We introduce provisional ecological sites and associated state-and-transition models for the region, which can be differentiated by latitudinal drivers of: precipitation and temperature; local parent material and resulting soil differences; and landscape position, slope, or aspect.
• Identification of ecological sites and associated States or Phases in the Northern Appalachians provides land managers with quantifiable benchmarks for assessing forest compositional shifts due to natural or anthropogenic disturbance.

Keywords: forest, ecological site, Appalachian.