1 Agricultural Transformation of Southern Appalachia Ted L. Gragson, Paul V. Bolstad, & Meredith Welch Devine INTRODUCTION Humans impose patterns on the Earth through purposeful as well as inadvertent land-use, and these patterns affect local, regional and global ecological processes. The effects ultimately influence the sustainability of biophysical and cultural landscapes, as well as the quality of life. The challenge is to understand biophysical and cultural landscapes as the result of integrated socioeconomic and ecological dynamics playing out across potentially vast scales of space, time and organizational complexity [Turner, 1990 #203;Vitousek, 1997 #52;Levin, 1999 #42]. Many conceptualizations of the links between the socioeconomic and the biophysical realms derive from a “general linear reality” view of how and why events occur in either realm [Abbott, 2001 #204;Agarwal, 2001 #33;Kinzig, 2000 #205;Liu, 2001 #43]. A caricature of this view is that people behave monolithically with their land-use decisions governed exclusively by land rents, demographic pressures and technological capabilities that collectively drive processes in nature without any feedback to social processes. Certainly the intrinsic temporal rhythms and spatial arrangement of ecological systems bear the signature of human activities and institutions [Pyne, 1997 #47;Carpenter, 2001 #35;Scheffer, 2001 #48;Turner, 2002 #49]. However, temporal rhythms and spatial arrangements of human activities and institutions are in turn shaped and influenced by the ecological systems in which they are embedded [Cronon, 1983 #36;Diamond, 1997 #37;Dove, 1997 #38;Ostrom, 1999 #45;Berkes, 1998 #34]. The reciprocal “imprinting” between socioeconomic and biophysical systems means that artificially separating landscapes into these two component systems will fail 2 to improve understanding of the sustainability of either type of landscape or the quality of life. Our objective is to understand the agrarian transformation of southern Appalachia and specifically what happens when humans impose their signature on ecological systems, how they must then respond to the systems they helped create, and how the reciprocity between the two realms gives rise to an iterative alteration of the dynamics of the coupled socioeconomicbiophysical system across space and time. The general outline of the approach is to examine three stages of the agrarian-transformation cycle for southern Appalachia: 1. How human activities influence the spatial and temporal structure of agrarian landscapes, 2. What are the the ecological and environmental consequences of this spatial and temporal structure, 3. The human responses in the realm of conservation with a view to how these my direct further changes in agrarian landscapes. Our examination of southern Appalachia is different apart from previous investigations into agricultural transformation, is that it is multi-scalar, historical and comparative. We adopt narrative positivism because to build an empirically sound and methodologically rigorous description or agricultural transformation; this helps build the theoretical generalizations we ultimately strive for [Abbott, 2001 #204;Isaac, 1989 #21;Isaac, 1997 #22;Isaac, 1994 #23]. Our approach is multi-scalar in that it spans temporal, spatial and organizational levels with the goal of addressing not only the interlocking network of the elements proper to these levels, but the hierarchical relations between them. The combination of network and hierarchy give rise to the 3 inertial properties of a system and create the possibility for its transformation from one state to another. Our approach is historical, but the temporality is not merely a succession of events. The duration of stages result in a coercive narrative in the sense of implying a certain result. Our narrative is not a synonym for discours or the telling of a story, but an account of actual regularities in a socioeconomic-biophysical process. We use the concept of legacy in this context to represent the cumulative effect of human activities at moments in time that constrain the opportunities of current and future generations – it therefore subsumes the trajectory implied by duration as well as the turning point implied by narrative coercion. Turning points separate relatively smooth, directional trajectories by relatively abrupt, diversionary moments. In effect, our view treats agricultural transformation in southern Appalachia as discrete and categorical rather than continuous and numerical, and this leads to the comparative nature of our approach. By first taking a pattern-based approach we ultimately seek to understand general processes and relationships. Our approach is to identify complex events through the clustering of local cases with roughly the same values on many measures. This is different from a strict variable-based approach where the purpose is to generalize immediately on the basis of the variables treated as substantively independent of one another (correlated values are allowed in a variable-based approach). Because most things that could happen, don’t happen, we face a great challenge in understanding biophysical and cultural landscapes as the result of integrated socioeconomic and ecological 4 dynamics across potentially vast scales of space, time and organizational complexity. It is therefore better to first find local patterns before trying to define general regularities. We use the concept of regime in this context as the unique configuration of agricultural factors that define trajectories and turning points. We can ultimately manipulate these factors analytically to test different explanations and construct alternative futures. This is where history meets application and our approach and insights become practical to conservation and ecoregional planning through scenarios and forecasting [Groves, 2002 #207;Wollenberg, 2000 #206;Nilsson, 2003 #63;Bennett, 2003 #62]. In this view, conservation includes not only the preservation of natural patches and environmental quality across the landscape, but also the preservation of desirable cultural qualities including those associated with production on “working landscapes.” BACKGROUND The introduction, spread, and abandonment of agriculture represents the most pervasive alteration of the Earth’s environment during the past 10,000 years [Vitousek, 1986 #51;Matson, 1997 #44;Farina, 2000 #40]. While most places on the Earth bear the signature of agricultural use, the last 100 years of US history have been characterized by the progressive transition of agrarian landscapes and life ways to others uses. A significant portion of former agricultural lands are in the process of being developed and incorporated to the urban-suburban sprawl characteristic of the contemporary landscapes in the US. However, another significant portion is used less intensely or is actively conserved for its habitat values [USDA, 2001 #50]. Beyond the mere description of this change in land use, there is a growing need to understand the underlying mechanisms for the transition and the legacies associated with prior states so that possible future conditions can be anticipated. 5 By virtue of its geographic position, southern Appalachia can serve as a natural laboratory for evaluating across diverse gradients the proportional contribution of socioeconomic and biophysical processes to the structure and function of ecosystems. Physical environmental forces exert strong influences on the organization of southern Appalachian ecosystems, and much previous research on ecosystem responses to disturbance in southern Appalachia has focused on a subset of important forces acting on large scales and/or short-time intervals. For example, the pattern and magnitude of wind damage from Hurricane Opal was substantially controlled by local physiography [Hunter, 1999 #208;Wright, 2002 #209]. However, direct human disturbances such as farming, logging, mining and road construction have altered more than 98% of the southern Appalachian landscape. Indirect actions such as the introduction of the Chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) and the balsam wooly adelgid (Adelges piceae) have similarly caused profound changes. However, we still know relatively little about the diversity and magnitude of the human contribution to southern Appalachia disturbance. For example, the shift from Native American to Euro-American dominance in southern Appalachia entailed important changes well known to historians in the ways both peoples organized their lives, but it also involved fundamental reorganization of the plant and animal communities of the region. There has been little research in southern Appalachia addressing the fundamental reorganization of biophysical systems in response to social, political or economic forces. The more typical approach is to consider the pressure exerted by external political and economic forces on the organization of southern Appalachian society with the environment relegated to the role of scenery in the resulting 6 narratives [e.g., \Dunaway, 1996 #135]. The point is to build explanations of cause for the patterned relationships observed in the agricultural transformation of southern Appalachia that go beyond vague statements that disturbance is driven by technology, socioeconomic organization, level of economic development or culture. Although the vast majority of research on environmental change has been directed at global scale processes, regional-scale estimates at the scale of kilometers or hectares are perhaps ultimately more important. This is because estimates at this scale give recognition to the fact that policymakers, resource managers, and the public at large make decisions in response to local and regional conditions more so than to global conditions. For example, residents of the southwestern United States are more likely to be concerned about changes in water availability and fire frequency over the coming decades than residents of the southeastern United States, who are more likely to be concerned about how changes in forest cover might affect their ability to produce timber and recreational opportunities. Determining the regional-scale consequences of environmental change rests on fundamental ecological understanding of how the population dynamics of plants, animals and microbes are linked to biogeochemical processes. It also depends on understanding how pressures such as urban expansion, gentrification and industrial diversification shape ecosystems and landscapes. Focusing on the agricultural transformation of southern Appalachia presents the opportunity to address fundamental issues in the historical ecology of the region that can help bridge the longstanding parochialism of southern history. This creates the potential for placing the region at the forefront of efforts to make sense of human-environmental relations irrespective of place 7 [Kolchin, 2003 #64]. It also offers the potential of building the regional-scale estimates for processes that will ultimately be of importance to decision-makers responding to local and regional conditions. By understanding the reciprocal influences between socioeconomic and biophysical systems we can address how the conjunction of events in both domains during previous time periods both constrain and structure future environmental and societal opportunities. Regions, in effect, constitute a multitude of distinctive, self-organized landscapes for which the periodization of distinct regimes and the long-view of history move understanding from the initial recognition of pattern to the determination of process. By this means we can dispel popular and sometimes scholarly scenarios for southern Appalachia of early settlers patiently chopping their way out of the dark woods into the sunlight or timber barons slashing and burning their way across the landscape. AGRICULTURAL REGIMES Critical to our analysis of the agricultural transformation of southern Appalachia is our development of the concept of an agricultural regime. We define an agricultural regime as the unique configuration of agricultural factors – crops, livestock, humans and management technologies – applied to a landscape. In the present article we concentrate on pattern recognition in the data on agricultural transformation. The term regime is used variously in the physical and social sciences. Geomorphology uses "regime theory" to describe how streams balance the making of part of their boundaries from the transported load they carry and making part of their transported load from their boundaries. A regime stream, river or canal is one that has achieved average equilibrium between deposition and scouring [Blench, 1957 #31;Poff, 1997 #30]. A fire regime refers to the natural fire equilibria on a landscape in the absence of human 8 mechanical intervention [Agee, 1993 #28;Brown, 1995 #29]. It is a function of the average number of years between fires combined with the severity of the fire on the dominant overstory vegetation. Political systems such as democracy or authoritarianism are referred to as political regimes. These are differentiated by the types of rules and distribution of political resources enabling actors to exercise authority over their constituents [Kitschelt, 1992 #32]. More generally, a regime is often the term applied to the specific configuration of relations among independent and dependent variables such as average tax rate, progressivity and coverage when the goal is to understand their temporal or geographic distribution [Campbell, 2001 #25;Isaac, 1994 #24]. Agriculture, like other natural resource regimes, is a cultural practice that depends for its success on individuals combining a series of common pool resources – soil, climate, technology and labor [Agrawal, 2001 #27;Young, 1982 #26;Zimmerer, 1999 #61]. The minimum set of attributes needed to define agricultural regimes in southern Appalachia includes: • Resources – this includes the spatial variability and temporal unpredictability of biophysical factors as well as the adaptive dynamics and environmental tolerances of crop types. • Groups – this includes size, levels of wealth and income, types of heterogeneity, and the sociospatial incentives and disincentives affecting the capacity of individuals to coordinate land use and create cohesion at the level of the landscape. • Relationships – these include the network and hierarchy relations between resource systems and locally situated groups vis-à-vis circumstances beyond their immediate 9 control, including uneven development, governmental policy, consumer tastes as well as extra-local or global-scale forces. In the final analysis, an agricultural regime is a human artifact that has no existence or meaning apart from the behavior of individuals within the regime [Young, 1982 #26]. This is because in the context of common pool resource systems such as agriculture, participants (voluntarily) adopt and interact in the confines of the regime so as to foster credible commitments and facilitate recurrent transactions between themselves. The properties of the regime serve as constraints to human interaction that in turn derive from shared understandings about internalizing costs to forestall or attenuate conflict. From a qualitative standpoint, regimes constitute the patterns of behavior around which expectations converge. For southern Appalachia we briefly dissect the nature of data and previous approaches to behavior in order to address them from the standpoint of regimes. As of AD 2000, less than 2% of the population of the southern Appalachian study region listed agriculture as their primary occupation and less than 3% of households were classed as ruralfarm. Both measures reflect the strong proximity effect of the major cities in and surrounding the study region that structure its economy – Asheville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Roanoke, Winston-Salem and Greenville. The current rates of agricultural dependence and the distribution of the population are largely the consequence of social, political and economic forces over the last 40 years. As such, present statistics tell us little about the overall transformation of southern Appalachia as a consequence of agriculture that has a beginning going back nearly 5,000 years and accelerates as a process at the end of the first millennium AD. 10 Confounding the problem of understanding agricultural transformation from contemporary statistics is a long-standing “local color” narrative tradition in Appalachia [Anglin, 2002 #211]. Emerging at the turn of the 20th century, the tradition creates images of Appalachia by characterizing the people as independent, religious fundamentalists with strong family ties living in harmony with nature yet traditional and fatalistic in their outlook [Philliber, 1994 #212]. As an example, a recent article on housing in The Atlanta Constitution, the largest daily newspaper in the region, began “The ancient, misty mountains that surround the ‘hollers’ of southern Appalachia remain a wall between the region’s proud, melancholy people and American prosperity” (June 15, 1997: A1). The central difficulty with this narrative tradition is that scholars focus on the characterization of southern Appalachia as “an island of distress in a sea of affluence” [Moore, 1994 #213] and argue whether the situation is the result of long-term geographic isolation or the product of outsiders plundering the region's natural and social endowments [Eller, 1982 #214;Rothblatt, 1971 #215;Moore, 1994 #213;Caudill, 1963 #217;Salstrom, 1994 #168]. AGROECOLOGY OF SOUTHERN APPALACHIA This study of the agricultural transformation of southern Appalachia is part of our Coweeta LTER research and the study region defined in that project. Political definitions of Appalachia abound, but we define southern Appalachia as extending across the Blue Ridge province of the Southern Appalachian Highlands (FIGURE 1). Numerous authors converge in recognizing this area as a distinct biophysical and cultural region of the Continental United States [Markusen, 1987 #225;Bailey, 1996 #226;Whittaker, 1966 #227]. The area is more or less coterminous with 11 that referred to in anthropology and archaeology as the Appalachian Summit, a cultural and natural area first recognized by Kroeber [, 1953 #218] at a time when regional studies were more central to the discipline than they are currently [Wetmore, 2002 #16]. Boundaries of the Appalachian Summit region correspond in part of the boundaries of the Appalachia Geologic Province. This province extends from the Virginias to northern Georgia and contains the Paleozoic mountains east of the stable central region of North America. The Southern Appalachian Highlands are divided into the folded Ridge & Valley Province to the northwest, and the more complexly deformed Blue Ridge and Crystalline Appalachians to the southeast. The Coweeta LTER study area used to investigate agricultural transformation in southern Appalachia is confined to the Blue Ridge of the southern Appalachian Region consisting of the unfolded highlands from north Georgia through western Virginia. The original Paleozoic land surface of the Appalachian region has been severely eroded and dissected by numerous streams and rivers into a series of deep, steep-sided valleys separated by narrow ridges. Most minor water courses follow the Hiawassee, French Broad or Little Tennessee River westward to the Tennessee River. The Tennessee-North Carolina state line follows the ridgeline of the Appalachian chain and containing the highest peaks in the entire province. Although not part of the current analysis, we carry out intensive research in the Coweeta LTER as well as this project on two river basins: the Little Tennessee and the French Broad. The Little Tennessee River basin drains 2,225 km2 in Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee to the Gulf of Mexico via the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The headwaters are located in Rabun County, Georgia from where the river flows north into Macon County, North Carolina. Major tributaries include the Nantahala, Cheoah, Oconaluftee, Tuckasegee, Cullasaja and Cartoogechaye. The 12 French Broad River drains 4,886 km2 in North Carolina and Tennessee to the Gulf of Mexico via the Tennessee, Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The headwater is the 50-foot Court House Falls in Transylvania County, North Carolina and major tributaries include the Pigeon, Nolichucky, Mills, Davidson and Swannanoa Rivers. This southern Appalachian region is distinct geologically, floristically, and culturally from surrounding areas. The closest biological affinities are with the central Appalachian region to the north and east, with similar native flora adapted to the cool winters, moderate summers, and nearly uniform distribution of abundant rainfall. Regionally steep elevation gradients cause concomittent gradients in temperature, and this drives substantially differences in flora and fauna relative to adjacent lowlands. Unique biotic elements include the highest global concentration of endemic salamander species and among the highest floral diversities observed in temperate deciduous forests. Forests are taller, and denser, with flat areas restricted primarily to “coves” near first through third order streams, and the floodplains of fourth order rivers and larger. Because the southern Appalachians are generally steeper, cooler, and wetter than surrounding lowlands, agriculture entered later and exited earlier than adjacent regions. The surface structure of southern Appalachia interacts with the climatology of the greater southeast to create a highly varied agroecological landscape (TABLE 1). Rainfall and temperatures vary widely across the region as a result of differences in topography, elevation and thermal belts. Temperatures decrease from low to high elevation and average summer temperatures on the higher peaks are more similar to those in central New England 1400 km to the north than they are to the lower Piedmont only 150 km to the southeast. Precipitation is 13 abundant averaging more than 1600 mm yr-1. Rainfall typically increases from low to high elevation, but its distribution exhibits local mountain effects in the form of wet zones and rainshadows. Microclimate and related soil properties vary considerably on short spatial scales from ridge tops to streamside bottoms. Temperate deciduous forests are the dominate vegetation of the region. Because southern Appalachia is both cooler and wetter than the adjacent Ridge & Valley to the west or the Piedmont Plateau to the east it is a refugium for “northern” taxa that reached the region during the last glaciation [Braun, 1950 #219;Barnes, 1991 #220]. The intermixing of “northern” and “southern” taxa results in one of the most biodiverse regions of North America. Despite the contemporary vigor and beauty of the forest, research clearly demonstrates that visually intact ecosystems in the region harbor the “ghost of land use past” [Harding, 1998 #65]. Use of the land, albeit changing, is the constant across time. Forest clearing to convert land to agricultural use in the 13-14th centuries AD (prior to European contact) and again in the 19-20th centuries led to the direct removal of many native species from large portions of the landscape for extended periods of time. The introduction of the Chestnut blight (Cryphonectria parasitica) early in the 20th century had a dramatic effect on the structural composition of the forest [TABLE 2; \Diamond, 2000 #66]. Using data compiled from the network of 123 NOAA weather stations across the study region, we estimated precipitation, heat days and frost-free days and generated a first-order agroecological suitability index (FIGURE 2). This serves as the basis for an initial assessment of the patterns of productivity across space and time. Precipitation is measured as total average mm 14 of rainfall per year for stations with record lengths of 30 or more years. Heat days represent the forcing effect of temperature on vegetative growth between April 1 and October 30 where 10º Celsius is the base temperature [see \Powers, 2000 #221]. This again is a long-term average based on stations with a record length of at least 30 years. Frost-free days are the number of days between the last spring and the first fall occurrence of a 0-degree Celsius day; since relatively few stations have both first and last dates these values were derived for stations with a minimum record length of three years. Surfaces for precipitation, heat days and frost-free days were generated by kriging, then standardized and combined with equal weights using a multicriteria evaluation procedure [Gragson, 2002 #68;Burrough, 1998 #70;Goodchild, 1993 #56]. The index in Figure 2 is based on the median and interquartile range of the standardized scores of the final image. AGRI-CULTURAL HISTORY OF SOUTHERN APPALACHIA Time prior to European Contact is generally divided into nine major archaeological periods; after contact it is divided into an additional eight periods (TABLE 3). The names for periods as well as the boundaries between them vary between authors as a function of whether they are archaeologically or historically derived. The year 1700 marks the practical boundary between the availability of documentary evidence including maps, diaries, and reports from which to discern disturbance, and the need to rely more heavily on physical evidence and analogy. Before 1700 we rely extensively on the work of others. After 1700, we draw on our own research into the environmental footprint of the Colonial-era Cherokee (1685-1776) and the early settlement history of western North Carolina after the Treaty of 1819. From 1850 forward, we incorporate to our analysis information from the US Agricultural Census. 15 The Blue Ridge proper of southern Appalachia was settled by “plain folk,” free southern whites living outside the plantation economy during the antebellum period, between 1750 and 1850 [Kretzschmar, 1993 #222;Otto, 1989 #162;Salstrom, 1994 #168;Owsley, 1949 #223]. The region was effectively settled from two fronts: the North Carolina piedmont to the east, and the Great Valley of Eastern Tennessee to the west. By the Revolutionary War of 1776, settlement of the Great Valley and Piedmont was effectively complete and plain folk began spilling into the intermediate Blue Ridge area. The northwest part of the Blue Ridge within Tennessee, West Virginia and southwest Virginia were settled first by approximately 1780. The southwestern portion in what is now North Carolina and north Georgia were settled last. Settlement began in 1820 with a large tract of land purchased from the Cherokee in the Treaty of 1819, accelerated after the discovery of gold at Dahlonega Georgia in 1836 and culminated with the removal of the Cherokee to Oklahoma in 1838. However, humans have been a part of the southern Appalachian landscape since at least 8000 BC. Early human occupants were mobile, transient and dependent on the natural availability and abundance of animal and plant food resources [Perkinson, 1973 #224;Ward, 1999 #78]. Larger, more widely distributed settlements developed from 8000 BC to AD 800 in valleys, coves and adjacent uplands. By AD 800, southern Appalachian societies had established active trade with native populations to the north and the south. The first indications of patterns that lead eventually to the Mississippian period, the most advanced pre-contact southeastern society, appear by AD 900. The Mississippian period flourished between AD 1200 and 1450, and lingered in some form through first contact with the De Soto Expedition early in the 16th century. 16 In line with the objectives of the AgTrans Project and our use of agricultural regimes, we collapse time into four great periods: a pre-domestication period, a post-domestication period that precedes European Contact; a transitional period spanning the proto-historic through establishment of a functioning Federal Government (in reality approximately 1790, but for convenience we set to the Revolutionary War in 1776); and a period of Nationhood. TABLE 4 lists significant events in the agricultural transformation of southern Appalachia to guide our coverage of each of the four periods. Pre-Manipulation Period The earliest human presence in southern Appalachia probably dates to the late Paleo-Indian period between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago [Anderson, 1996 #72;Walker, 2002 #71]. Evidence, as is true throughout most of the eastern United States, largely consists of widely scattered, isolated surface finds of fluted Clovis- and Folsom-like spear points. Perkinson [, 1973 #224: 50] reports eight fluted points dating to the Early (9500 to 9000 BC) and Middle (9000 to 8500 BC) sub-periods scattered from Cherokee County to Ashe County, North Carolina. Finds from the late sub-period (8500 to 8000 BC) are equally rare. However, they were manufactured from local raw material suggesting a more permanent human occupation than the transient occupation of the preceding sub-periods [Purrington, 1983 #96]. During the early Holocene, the spruce-fir boreal forest interspersed with open parkland was giving way to a continuous mesic oak-hickory hardwood forest. The vegetative transition was complete by 9000 years ago, and the megafauna that grazed in the open parkland areas were 17 largely extinct by 10,800 years ago [Anderson, 1995 #76;Delcourt, 1983 #73;Delcourt, 1981 #74]. Because the Blue Ridge is higher and colder than surrounding areas it could have served for a time as a refuge for remnant populations of Pleistocene fauna. However, the Kimmswick site in eastern Missouri is the only site in the east where fluted points and megafauna (elephants in this case) have been found in association [Ward, 1999 #78]. The ability of people to cope with changing environments including new prey species has led archaeologists to speculate whether humans during the Paleoindian period followed a generalized or a specific subsistence strategy [Meltzer, 1988 #75;Walker, 2002 #71]. The general assumption about the forest-dominated landscape of the southeast is that a generalized subsistence strategy would have been more productive. Dust Cave located just beyond the southwestern extent of our study region at approximately 34º 46’ N, 85º 00’ W, is one of the few stratified Paleoindian (or Archaic) sites in the southeast. The interpretation of the faunal remains from this site suggests the human populations relied on a diverse array of aquatic and terrestrial species rather than relying on a small number of large prey. Subsistence strategies during the Early and Middle Archaic Period (8000-3000 BC) probably changed little from those described for the late Paleoindian subperiod although the tool kits did change [Davis, 1990 #77;Ward, 1999 #78]. Archaic period research in southern Appalachia is extremely limited. The richest insights for the entire period derive from intensive yet spatially restricted research on the Lower Tennessee River between 1967 and 1981 prior to the creation of the Tellico Dam and its flooding by the Tellico Lake. The investigations recorded 624 aboriginal sites and documented a 12,000-year occupation of a 34,444-acre study area at the juncture 18 between the Ridge and Valley and Blue Ridge physiographic provinces in southeastern Tennessee [Davis, 1990 #77]. This research suggests a progressive increase in the intensity of occupation and use of the area during the Early Archaic that declines during the Middle Archaic. The sharp decline in the percentage of base camps and the absence of Middle Archaic components from stratified sites suggests transient groups were using the Tellico study area. The more limited information from the Blue Ridge suggests the same pattern. For example, more than 90% of the Archaic material recovered in the survey of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was made from non-local cherts from outcrops in eastern Tennessee [Ward, 1999 #78]. Toward the end of the Middle Archaic, stone net-sinkers appear with other evidence suggesting an increase in the relative importance of fish and aquatic environments in general. This marks a turning point in the human-environmental relation in the southeast. Many of the ideas about Paleoindian and Early Archaic adaptations in southern Appalachia are little more than speculation. Most of the research has so far focused on developing and refining chronologies rather than the reconstruction of ancient lifeways [Ward, 1999 #78]. The simple yet ubiquitous tool assemblages from the Middle Archaic parallel those left by small, kin-based foraging groups moving as a unit from place to place. The pattern suggests a response to the drier and warmer Altithermal [~6000 BC to about 2000 BC; \ Wendland, 1974 #79;Ward, 1999 #78]. The Altithermal condition created a patchy and less predictable environment that required flexible subsistence strategies. Regardless of the details, the evidence clearly indicates that 19 humans from their first entry to southern Appalachia 11-12,000 years ago to approximately 3000 BC practiced an extractive rather than a manipulative use of natural resources. The Hearth of Eastern Domestication Following the climate shift of the Altithermal, the Late Archaic through Mississippian periods are characterized by dramatic increases in human population, the beginning of pottery-making and the gradual shift toward sedentary villages. Later, the sharp differences in social rank emerge and, most significantly, there is an increased reliance on cultivated plants and the development of agricultural economies [Gremillion, 2002 #127]. As with the preceding periods, most archaeologists rely on the extensive period research from southeastern Tennessee and the well-established if sparse evidence for interaction and exchange between the Appalachian Summit and nearby regions to infer the trajectory of change [Ward, 1999 #78]. The analysis of food remains early in the late Archaic period from sites in southeastern Tennessee indicates upland hunting, the collection of large quantities of acorns and hickory nuts, and a strong riverine focus involving extensive exploitation of aquatic resources [Davis, 1990 #77;Chapman, 1994 #82]. From a rock-filled fire pit at the Bacon Bend site dated to 2440 BC, however, comes the most significant evidence: small charred fragments of squash rind [Chapman, 1981 #80;Chapman, 1994 #82]. Squash remains with similar dates have been recovered from sites in Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky [Conrad, 1984 #83;Smith, 1997 #84;Fritz, 2000 #85]. Changes in fishing technology seem to be instrumental to the spread of the native eastern gourd (Curcurbita pepo spp. ovifera) first cultivated in the Central Mississippi Valley possibly for use as net floats. The non-native bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) appears 20 in the mid-continent around 2000-2300 BC possibly through trade with groups along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts [Fritz, 2000 #85]. The local native sumpweed (Iva annua var. macrocarpa) and sunflower (Helianthus annuus var. macrocarpus), a close relative from the Southwest were cropped in Midwestern gardens by 2300 BC [Crites, 1993 #86;Fritz, 2000 #85]. No later than 1500 BC they were joined by a domesticated version of chenopod or goosefoot (Chenopodium berlandieri ssp. jonesianum). The wild-growing chenopod thrives in floodplain and disturbed upland settings across eastern North America. The garden complex that eventually emerges comprised “starchy” (high carbohydrate) species including chenopod, little barley (Hordeum pusillum), maygrass (Phalaris caroliniana), and erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum), and “oily” (high lipid) varieties including gourd/squash, sunflower, and sumpweed. Tobacco (Nicotiana quadrivalvis or multivalvis) was introduced approximately AD 1 from the west coast, and maize (Zea mays) about the same time via the Southwest rather than directly from Mexico [Anderson, 2002 #91;Fritz, 2000 #85;Chapman, 1981 #80;Yarnell, 1985 #81]. West-central Kentucky and eastern Tennessee yield the highest counts of native starchy and oily seeds in the Southeast outside Illinois and Ohio; the lowest counts are for southeastern Tennessee, west-central Alabama and the piedmont of North and South Carolina [Gremillion, 2002 #127]. Along with other evidence, the larger Central Mississippi Valley containing the Ridge and Valley and the Blue Ridge proper, is the Hearth of Eastern Domestication. This is the core area noted by Fritz [, 1993 #128] where locally and distantly domesticated species converge to form a true garden complex denoting the transition from extraction to manipulation (FIGURE 21 4). However, there is little evidence to suggest populations in the lower southeast were much committed to food production until the development of maize-based agriculture toward the end of the first millennium AD. Excavations at the Casino site in western North Carolina provide botanical evidence for sumpweed and chenopodium cultivation in the Appalachian Summit from AD ~235 in addition to the collection of the seeds of acorn, hazelnut, walnut, chestnut and honey locust. The other period site from the Summit with reported remains is Warren Wilson and it provides evidence for chenopod and knotweed [Yarnell, 1976 #90;Wetmore, 2002 #16;Purrington, 1983 #96]. There is still little archaeobotanical information from either the Appalachian Summit or the adjacent Piedmont of North and South Carolina. However, it has been suggested that future research in this area may be important in assessing the relationship between farming and seasonal variability in length of growing season [Gremillion, 2002 #127]. For example, there is some evidence for farming developing in areas characterized by 60-100 days per year with temperatures below 0º Celsius [Gremillion, 2002 #127]. The suggestion is that early gardening practices were a strategy for increasing storable produce by members of sedentary or near-sedentary societies relative to the yearly fluctuation of such staples as acorns and hickory nuts [Fritz, 2000 #85;Gremillion, 2002 #127]. As the human population increased, the movement of local groups was restricted to smaller territories and their ability to compensate for yearly variation in the supply of wild foods through movement was limited. Oily-seed species with large seeds, thin-coats, and denser or non-shattering seed heads provided insurance against want during winter and spring. In any event, the potential crop yield of the species in the 22 early garden complex was as high as 1000 kg/ha and comparable to those possible from maize [Anderson, 2002 #91;Smith, 1992 #92]. In years of plenty surplus seed could be traded with neighboring groups, suggested by the increased production of native grains in southeastern Tennessee and the Appalachian Summit that coincides with participation in the Hopewell Exchange Network between 100 BC and AD 300-400 [Chapman, 1994 #82;Fritz, 2000 #85;Ward, 1999 #78;Davis, 1990 #77]. There is additional circumstantial evidence for intensive cultivation from this time period. This comes from the extent of land clearing, manufacture and use of hoes, the construction and use of storage facilities, and the manufacture of specialized ceramic vessels for both cooking and storing crops [Gremillion, 1993 #94;Smith, 1992 #92;Anderson, 2002 #91]. After AD 800, sites are larger, contain multiple features and structures covering several acres and indicate an increased occupational intensity relative to the first half of the period [Chapman, 1994 #82;Keel, 1972 #97;Ward, 1999 #78;Davis, 1990 #77]. After AD 1000, there are villages with several hundred inhabitants and massive ceremonial mound centers are built indicating the emergence of highly stratified societies. Changes in village form are closely associated with a shift in agricultural production. Maize was first introduced to the region about AD 1, but it was not intensively cultivated until about AD 800. By AD 1000 it was a staple and all other native crops with the exception of sunflower began to decrease in relative importance [Johannessen, 1993 #87]. 23 The garden complex encountered by the de Soto Expedition of 1540, the first Europeans to reach southern Appalachia, was completed by incorporating two additional domesticates. The cushaw squash (Curcurbita argyrosperma ssp. argyrosperma) was adopted by AD 1000 from the Southwest; the garden bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), probably also from the Southwest, was adopted by AD 1200 [Fritz, 2000 #85;Ward, 1999 #78]. Acorns, hickory nuts, walnuts, butternuts and a wide variety of fleshy fruits remained important, but agriculture was clearly the subsistence foundation of pre-contact societies [Yarnell, 1976 #90;Gremillion, 1989 #93;Ward, 1999 #78]. A simplified, maize-dominated farming system was fully entrenched in the Central Mississippian Valley by AD 1400 and associated with the formation of Mississippian chiefdoms. Mississippian settlements vary widely in size from small farmsteads to fairly large nucleated villages with platform mounds. Irrespective of size, these settlements are nearly always located in floodplain environments, and non-riverine sites are exclusively small, temporary camps [Dickens, 1978 #98;Purrington, 1983 #96;Davis, 1990 #77]. The form and structure of village mounds clearly suggest a shift toward a hierarchical form of sociopolitical organization centered on a class of hereditary elite rulers [Anderson, 1994 #99;DePratter, 1983 #100]. The size and complexity of Mississippian polities in southern Appalachia varied from large centers with multiple mounds and control of large territories to relatively small villages. The influence of smaller villages that often lacked mounds did not go beyond the immediate vicinity of the site. Some authors have suggested that high-ranking leaders made demands for surplus grains and built granaries to be filled with maize [Rose, 1991 #88;Scarry, 1993 #89]. Certainly, farming strategies were affected by the obvious increase in political integration. This might include the allocation of fields and some of the surplus production could have been used as tribute. 24 The chiefdom-level Mississippian polities were notoriously unstable and few lasted more than 100 year [Hally, 1996 #101]. Individual polities rose and fell, and the centers of population concentration and the buffer zones between them shifted through time. Some groups dispersed up and down river valleys in farmsteads and small hamlets, while others were congregated in fortified towns. As a consequence, no locality in the region was subject to continuous and intensive human impact for more than a few centuries. Mississippian chiefdoms declined in parts of the southeast by AD 1500 giving way to more egalitarian societies [Ward, 1999 #78;Chapman, 1994 #82]. Town houses from this subsequent period were sometimes built on pre-existing Mississippian mounds as noted by William Bartram in his travels through Cherokee territory in the 1770s [Doren, 1928 #102]. Many questions remain about the closing centuries of the Mississippian period in southern Appalachia. For example, no archaeological material dating between AD 1100-1450 has been recovered from the Tuckasegee drainage west to the North Carolina-Tennessee border [Ward, 1999 #78]. However, it seems unlikely that people simply abandoned the lower Little Tennessee and Hiawassee River valleys for 350 years. Certainly there were sizable populations in the adjacent portions of north Georgia and eastern Tennessee up through first contact. The greatest question of all, however, is the origin of the Cherokee. By the late 17th century when European observers were attuned to the ethnic differences across the southeast, the Cherokee appear to exclusively control the southern Appalachian highlands. They are linguistically related to Iroquoian-speaking groups of upstate New York from whom they split perhaps 4,000 years ago [Mithun, 1984 #120;Snow, 1984 #121]. Their relation to the chiefdoms in the Appalachian 25 Summit remains ambiguous, however. Several Cherokee towns, for example, during the 18th century bore Muskogean-derived names [Rodning, 2002 #109]. This fact along with other evidence suggests a coalescence of native communities in southern Appalachia as a function of European contact and the opportunities that came with the Columbian Revolution. Columbian Revolution Time of first contact varied widely across the southeast. In 1525 an expeditionary force led by Pedro de Quejo sailed along the Atlantic coast from Andrews Sound in south Georgia to Delaware Bay, making landfall at various places in between [Hoffman, 1994 #103]. The effect on interior groups is unknown, but numerous authors have long-speculated on the biological consequences of this and other early contacts [Thornton, 1992 #104]. Hernando de Soto was the first to visit the interior, embarking from Florida in 1539 and reaching what is now west central North Carolina in the spring of 1540. He traveled west over the Blue Ridge into Tennessee and finally south into Georgia where he visited the paramount chiefdom of Coosa [Hudson, 1985 #106]. The explorers were impressed by the wealth and authority of the Coosa chief: The Cacique came out to receive him at the distance of two crossbow shots from the town, borne on a litter on the shoulders of his principal men, seated on a cushion, and covered with a mantle of martinskins of the size and shape of a woman’s shawl; on his head he wore a diadem of plumes, and he was surrounded by many attendants playing upon flutes and singing [Elvas, 1968 (1557) #105: 81]. Juan Pardo retraced de Soto's route in two separate expeditions in 1566 and 1568 [Hudson, 1990 #108]. On the first expedition Pardo founded a small fort near present-day Marion in McDowell 26 County (North Carolina). He garrisoned the fort with 30 men under the command of Sergeant Hernando Moyano de Morales who became involved in local politics and fought several battles for his native allies. Moyano was probably active from late 1566 through mid 1567 when he was rescued by Pardo after he and his troops fled the fort upon its imminent attack by a force of some 3,000 natives. There is nevertheless no significant evidence that 16th century Spanish expeditions had a lasting impact on aboriginal groups in southern Appalachia. The English settled Jamestown in 1607, but did not explore the back country until the mid 1600s. By 1670 there was a steady stream of traders and packhorses making their way to the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge bringing tools, weapons, ornaments and disease. Needham and Arthur were the first known to record their observations about the Cherokee when they traveled from Virginia through the Blue Ridge in 1673. After probably descending the Watauga river, passing near present-day Johnson City, going down the Nolachucky then the French Broad River, they eventually reached the major Cherokee town of Chota on the Little Tennessee River. They described it as follows: This town is seated on ye river side, having ye clefts of ye river on ye one side being very high for its defence, the other three sides trees of two foot over, pitched on end, twelve foot high, and on ye topps scafolds place with parrapits to defend the walls and offend theire enemies which men stand on to fight…This forte is foure square; 300: paces over and ye houses sett in streets…[Williams, 1928 #111: 27-8] By 1690, the Cherokee were the principal aboriginal group occupying southern Appalachia when sustained contact with English traders from Charles Town was established. The Cherokee had 27 the largest population of the many groups in the southern Appalachian region with a population of approximately 12,000. They also claimed some 322,600 km2 (125,000 mi2) of southern Appalachia including most of the present states of Kentucky and Tennessee, and large sections of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia [Mooney, 1995 #125;Royce, 1975 #126]. The area thus served as a buffer between France, England and Spain in their three-way struggle for ultimate control of the southeast that lasted nearly to 1776 and the American Revolution [Dunaway, 1996 #135;Gearing, 1974 #122]. The Cherokee where also strategically placed for the British to purpose trade with the interior Indian nations in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys [Johnson, 1719 #123;Corkran, 1962 #124]. Deerskins were the most important commodity and the principal means for the Cherokee to obtain the European trade goods that diffused rapidly into Cherokee society. The most sought after items – firearms, hatchets, knives, traps, brass kettles, and beads – in most cases provided more efficient alternatives to existing Cherokee equivalents [Newman, 1979 #115;Wilms, 1973 #114]. However, the Cherokee also adopted European-introduced plants and animals (TABLE 5) including watermelon (Citrullus vulgaris), peaches (Prunus persica), apples (Malus pumila), horses, pigs and chickens [Goodwin, 1977 #112]. Other crops were added during the late 18th or early 19th century partly because they were best cultivated by using the plow that the Cherokee adopted late relative to other groups. Obtaining export-oriented commodities removed men from towns for up to four months during the hunting season [Goodwin, 1977 #112;Hawkins, 1848 #116], and this had a direct effect on the behavior of the women and children left in the villages. For example, the Cherokee adopted pigs because women and children could easily keep them in 28 small pens, provisioning them from the surrounding forests and thus provide themselves with meat during the extended absences of the men [Adair, 1974 #117;Goodwin, 1977 #112]. Cattle were the last European production element adopted by the Cherokee. Martin Schneider noted during his travels in Cherokee country in 1783-84 that “…every family has its own field…they have not fences about their fields, on which account no cattle are kept except by traders” [Williams, 1928 #111: 261]. The acceptance of cattle marked the Cherokee conversion from a mixed agriculture and hunting subsistence to full-time farming. The Federal Indian policy of directed culture change [Newman, 1979 #115] further encouraged and accelerated the transformation in land-use practices and culture. By the early 19th century according to Wilms [, 1991 #119: 1] the Cherokee “…transformed their aboriginal landscape into a new cultural landscape that resembled and perhaps sometimes surpassed their white frontier neighbors.” NATIONHOOD: 1776-1950 Up through 1750 the Carolina Piedmont and Appalachian Summit were the home of Indian traders, hunters and cowpen-workers. The cowpen workers tended large herds of cattle and hogs that ranged free in the unfenced forests and supplied meat to the major Atlantic sea port for the region, Charles Town South Carolina [Otto, 1989 #162;Sirmans, 1966 #182]. The British Crown assumed control of the Carolina colony by buying out seven of the eight proprietors; the heir of the eighth, Lord Granville, refused to sell and received in 1744 the northern half of North Carolina as his share. By offering lands in return for modest rents, Lord Granville attracted settlers from the northern colonies and particularly Pennsylvania Germans. The early Pennsylvania settlers were joined after 1761 by Scotch-Irish and German immigrants from 29 Europe who were encouraged by South Carolina’s offer of bounties to white settlers [Bridenbaugh, 1971 #184;Merriwether, 1940 #183;Fischer, 1989 #185]. By 1775 the Southern Appalachian “Backcountry” was exporting an array of transportable commodities including flax seed, wheat, indigo, livestock and peltry [Otto, 1989 #162]. The Backcountry frontier was different than other period frontiers including the Chesapeake and coastal Carolina. The Backcountry frontier lacked a major cash-crop, there were relatively few slaves, and the majority of white inhabitants were from Northern England, Scotland and Ireland (i.e., Scotch-Irish) rather than (southern) English-American [Fischer, 1989 #185;Otto, 1989 #162;Bridenbaugh, 1971 #184]. By ca. 1790, northern English and Scotch-Irish comprised between 51-53% of whites in the North and South Carolina Backcountry [Fischer, 1989 #185]. The difference played out in a pivotal event in the early settlement of eastern Tennessee, the socalled “Regulation” rebellion. This was a response to a comprehensive political reform agenda (with social and racial overtones) suppressed at the battle of Alamance, North Carolina in 1771 [Hatley, 1993 #186;Otto, 1989 #162]. Diehard “Regulators” fled to frontier lands beyond the crest of the Appalachian Mountains marking the Proclamation Line of 1763 that separated Native American from American Colonial lands. Many of the Regulators arrived at the Watauga settlements in what is now eastern Tennessee, established by Virginians in approximately 1769 [Hatley, 1993 #186;Dixon, 1976 #189;Summers, 1903 #188;Arthur, 1914 #187]. By 1819 the political boundaries of the United States stretched to the Pacific seaboard, but before the interior lands could be opened to agricultural settlement the federal government had to extinguish Indian claims. In southern Appalachia the process involved numerous quit-claim 30 treaties between the United States and the Cherokee. A progressive series of treaties were signed from 1785 to the Treaty of New Echota proclaimed May 23, 1836, in which the Cherokee Nation ceded to the United States all its claims to lands east of the Mississippi River [Royce, 1975 #126;Otto, 1989 #162]. The availability of cheap public lands made possible by these treaties attracted thousands of agriculturalists from the southern seaboard. They first settled the piedmont areas of North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama, and gradually converged on the interior highlands. The Little Tennessee and French Broad River basins offered attractive farming opportunities [Inscoe, 1989 #151], and between 1790 and 1850 the population of the entire study region grew at the average annualized rate of 3.4% peaking at 7.6% between 1790 and 1800 (FIGURE 5). One final pattern carrying through from Colonial times to Nationhood in southern Appalachia is that of land distribution – a few large absentee owners, a small class of yeomanry, and many landless families [Fischer, 1989 #185;Dunaway, 1996 #135;Salstrom, 1994 #168]. Inequality was greater in the backcountry and the southern highlands than in any other rural region of the United States. By the last decade of the 18th century (TABLE 6), Gini ratios for total wealth in four Tennessee counties in the upper northwest corner of the study area ranged from 64 to 75. The top decile of wealthholders owned between 47-73% of land and slaves, while between 2839% of the population had neither. The situation appears to get worse through 1850 in this portion of Tennessee, and by implication the region at large. Based on results from Cocke county (Gini = 62) and Johnson county (Gini = 71) the situation does not change much into the 20th century either [Winters, 1987 #190;Fischer, 1989 #185;Geisler, 1983 #191]. 31 Over the course of the 19th century, the population of Appalachia became enmeshed in the emerging global system. This was a consequence of the plantation economy of the lower south and the commodity chains that spread outward from the Atlantic Rim to the Caribbean and the urban European centers [Dunaway, 1996 #135;Salstrom, 1994 #168]. The economic ties to the lower south in particular led to a shift of production priorities in southern Appalachia. Production shifted from subsistence and shelter that prevailed during the frontier era to marketing agricultural surpluses. The singular focus of coastal plain plantations on cash crops such as cotton or rice limited their capacity to produce the foodstuffs necessary to sustain the enslaved agricultural labor, and southern Appalachia met this need. The exported subsistence commodities were produced on small and medium family-operated farms [Groover, 2003 #145]. Meeting this need was not insignificant. Slaves represented on average 46% of the population in the seven Deep South states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Texas) that seceded from the Union by March 1861 prior to the battle of Fort Sumter (April 12-14, 1861) – the beginning of the Civil War [Kolchin, 2003 #64]. Slaves made up 57.2% of the population of South Carolina, and this was the largest of any state in the Union. It also stood out in marked contrast to the 18 northern states with no slaves at all. The distribution of slaves throughout mountain counties in Appalachia was more variable and ranged from 2-25% [Inscoe, 1989 #151]. After the Civil War, Appalachia continued to supply subsistence products to the lower south where cotton farming and the tenancy system undermined rural sufficiency and diversified farming [Fite, 1984 #197;Wright, 1986 #198;Groover, 2003 #145]. 32 The need for transporting commodities also influenced the building of an improved transportation network. In 1850 the southern states only had 2,000 miles of railroad, largely confined to the Atlantic seaboard states. The agricultural prosperity that began in the 1850s, however, stimulated construction of both interstate and local lines in the interior [Cotterill, 1924 #193;Stover, 1978 #194]. By 1860 the Southern states had about 10,000 miles of railroad tracks. This helped reorient settlement away from waterways in some areas most agriculturalists in the more rugged highlands continued depending on canoes, large flatboats or keelboats (e.g., Little Tennessee and French Broad) and wagons for transportation [Black, 1952 #196;Stover, 1978 #194;Taylor, 1951 #195;Groover, 2003 #145]. There is some support for the cyclical expansion and contraction of the rural economy of Appalachia during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries with a 50-year periodicity conforming to a socalled Kondratieff wave [Kondratieff, 1979 #199]. Economic stagnation provides the impetus to frontier expansion and colonialism, and the resulting capture of new resources revives the stagnating economy [Salstrom, 1994 #168;Dunaway, 1996 #135;Groover, 2003 #145]. The take-off for the first cycle in southern Appalachia occurs in approximately 1820. Returns were favorable through the 1830s with cheap transportation and favorable prices, but a banking crisis in 1837 shook the American economy and commodity prices fell [North, 1961 #192;Otto, 1989 #162]. Prices soon recovered and per farm production peaked during the 1850-1860 decade. The 1850 decade not only marks a watershed of agricultural production for Appalachia, it also reflects the onset of a comprehensive political reform agenda by the United States. The Regulator Rebellion in the third quarter of the 18th century was the reaction to a regional reform 33 agenda. The Federal government began implanting reforms in banking, land ownership and agriculture starting in the 1840s. These reforms combined with the central government’s increasing effectiveness at ensuring policy compliance eventually resulted in a dramatic shift in the agricultural regime of the United States. The year 1850 furthermore marks the beginning of the regular collection of national Agricultural Census information (and other types of information), reflecting a State strategy to increase legibility [Scott, 1998 #200]. It also provides the means to identify spatial and temporal transformation signatures beyond what is possible with the earlier records. We use data sets for three pivotal dates to characterize the distribution of production across the study region spatially and temporally as a function of farm area, commodity classes, and agroecology. The three pivotal dates are 1850, 1900 and 1950. These respectively represent a) the peak of antebellum agricultural production, b) the point of recovery after Reconstruction yet prior to the radical expansion of the timber industry, and c) the end of agriculture as way of life in Appalachia. The average farm size in the study region in 1850 was 131 has (323 acres; TABLE 7). Based on a limited sample size from another study [Otto, 1982 #161], the ratio of improved to unimproved land was 1:5 in the mountains. Land-clearing was reportedly carried out annually by the vast majority of mountain farmers since only the wealthiest could afford to purchase fertilizers that would allow them to plant the same area every year [Otto, 1982 #161]. By one estimate, it cost more to lime one acre of land than to buy three acres in the western U.S. [Lebergott, 1985 #155]. The general cropping procedure was to girdle trees, burn the area to kill pests and further clear the land, then plant corn between the remaining stumps [Otto, 1989 #162;Otto, 1982 #161]. Slash and burn was the general practice through the early part of the 20th century. As for 34 production, there were shifts over time in the relative importance of different commodity classes (TABLE 8). Grains and forage account for 94% of total production in 1850; grain, forage and fruit account for 93% of total production in 1900; and forage, fiber and grain account for 97% of production in 1950. The principal grain across time is corn at 60%, 45% and 13% of total production respectively in 1850, 1900, and 1949. Corn was used to feed livestock, but was also converted to grain alcohol for storage, transportation and sale as “moonshine” [Otto, 1989 #162;Davis, 2000 #132]. The agroecology of the region (FIGURE 2) limits the production of crops such as cotton and tobacco to the warmer and lower areas. Fruits requiring an extended cold season to set fruit such as apples and peaches are concentrated in the cooler and higher areas. While highest production in 1850, 1900 and 1950 corresponds roughly with the area of median to maximum agroecological suitability there are other forces at work that ultimately determine county-level production. Probably the most significant was access to transportation: the counties in eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia in the study area were linked to Atlanta, Charleston and the eastern seaboard via the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad as of 1855; much of western North Carolina and north Georgia, however, had only limited roadways until after WW II [Cotterill, 1924 #193;Black, 1952 #196;Otto, 1989 #162;Groover, 2003 #145]. Building transportation routes was identified by the Appalachian Regional Commission in the early 1960s as the first step needed to open the region the opportunity for economic development (see below). Southern Appalachia in the 19th century is said to have been one of the most self-sufficient regions in the country [Salstrom, 1994 #168] with farmers growing a wide variety of fiber, 35 forage, fruit, grain and other products (TABLE 10). The claim is not without challenge when subsistence is defined as the level at which the farm as a production unit is able to reproduce itself. We still lack the necessary data to make such an evaluation, but evidence from Beech Creek is suggestive. Beech Creek is a neighborhood in the hills of eastern Kentucky in Central Appalachia. In 1880, up to 35% of households may have been producing below the subsistence level in Beech Creek [Weingartner, 1989 #181]. Family and kin relationships probably made possible the reproduction of marginal and below-subsistence farms through inter-household strategies of survival [Halperin, 1990 #264]. Total farm area increased 19% between 1850 and 1900 while the number of farms increased 275% and the average farm area decreased by 66%, and the reproductive rate was the highest of any region in America [DeJong, 1968 #133]. Between 1900 and 1950 total farm area decreased by 25%, the number of farms increased by 14% and the average farm area decreased by 36%. Population growth and the practice of partible inheritance triggered the transition from frontier expansion to infilling during the second half of the 19th century [Salstrom, 1994 #168]. The ever-decreasing farm size meant more land needed to be cleared each year, which made slash and burn less and less viable as a production strategy. This undermined the viability of southern Appalachia farms. Phosphate mining and the expansion of the rail system made fertilizer more widely available, but its cost was still prohibitive for most mountain farmers [Otto, 1982 #161]. After the Civil War there was a movement toward the marketing of surplus grains and livestock [Weingartner, 1989 #181;Salstrom, 1994 #168]. Cattle and other livestock were always critical components of the overall production system in southern Appalachia; hogs were fed on mast and 36 cattle were allowed to wild-forage on unfenced lands [Inscoe, 1989 #151;Otto, 1989 #162;Davis, 2000 #132]. The widespread introduction of fencing after the Civil War and the subsequent rise of the timber industry, however, meant that farmers with small holdings could no longer forage hogs and cattle on common lands. Furthermore, cattle and hog holdings were increasing in tandem with the human population during the later half of the 19th century and more animals per unit area resulted in more soil compaction. Compaction affected the capacity of the soil to retain moisture and increased runoff and erosion. In addition, cattle grazed on saplings and this slowed the rate of reforestation [Otto, 1982 #161]. By the end of the 19th century, the overall viability of the small farm was in jeopardy. Many full-time farmers had to seek part-time wage employment in mining and timbering to ensure family s urvival [Salstrom, 1994 #168;Otto, 1989 #162;Dunaway, 1996 #135;Groover, 2003 #145]. By 1920 erosion was resulting in serious soil loss [Salstrom, 1994 #168]. The 1880-1950 period marks the rise and consolidation of the state and federal institutional framework regulating agriculture (TABLE 9). For example, the Hatch Act of 1887 created a national network of agricultural experiment stations, while the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 created the U. S. Cooperative Extension Service. The most far reaching was the Agricultural Adjustment Act. Its initial effect in southern Appalachia was to reduce the production of corn and hogs, the region’s biggest outputs. Many mountain families did not participate in the program because it meant they would then need to spend money they no longer had to buy the corn and pork they no longer produced. The acreage cutbacks had little effect on large landholders. They could increase productivity per acre by using pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides and mechanization that were collectively cost-prohibitive for small producers [Salstrom, 1994 37 #168]. Modifications to the Agricultural Adjustment program after 1930 allowed for regional and farm-to-farm differences and began to make a difference to small-scale farmers. In addition, the Federal Government began distributing phosphate freely and encouraging its use to promote legume ground cover. The result was increased groundcover and decreased erosion [Salstrom, 1994 #168]. Nevertheless, by 1940 and in spite of these programs Southern Appalachia was a distressed region and between 1940 and 1960 there was a net out-migration of 1.8 million people [Salstrom, 1994 #168;DeJong, 1968 #133]. The event is referred to as the “Great Out Migration” and it conditions the subsequent history of the region. New South: 1950 to Present By the early 1960s Appalachia was described as “an island of distress in a sea of affluence” [Moore, 1994 #213]. Some authors noted that living conditions in the southern mountains were analogous to those found in many Third World countries [Falk, 1988 #258]. This situation led to the creation in the early 1960s of the Appalachian Regional Commission with the aim of resolving the economic disparity between Appalachia and the rest of the United States. The strategy of the Commission was to build highways between population centers to facilitate economic development and so improve local access to educational, health, recreational, commercial and industrial facilities. Changes were dramatic. Between 1970 and 1991, certain economic sectors – particularly tourism and service – grew as much as 600% in the 13 states comprising “political” Appalachia. By reference to a matched control group of counties elsewhere in the United States, the fast-growing Appalachian counties showed superior economic, social, and public health gains [Isserman, 1995 #210]. 38 Southern Appalachian traditions changed substantially during and after the integration of the region into the larger national economy. As transportation networks developed, many Appalachian families abandoned a difficult, meager and uncertain agricultural livelihood and moved to the rural areas surrounding regional cities. In doing this they took their cultural traditions with them [Halperin, 1990 #264]. For example, the strong resistance to zoning and other land use restrictions in southern Appalachia has been related to the strong tradition of individual and family independence [Cho, 2003 #239;Falk, 1988 #258]. At the same time, large numbers of individual from other parts of the country began migrating to southern Appalachia reversing the effects of the Great Out Migration. The situation was set for the transformation of the Old South into the New South. The transformation of Appalachia over the last 30 years is just as salient, if less well studies, than the more recent transformation of the “Wild” West into the “New” West [Hansen, 2002 #202]. Southern Appalachian settlement through the 1960s was concentrated in low lying areas on large flats or near the confluence of rivers. The contemporary trend is for individual dwellings dispersed in loose clusters across the landscape particularly on steep slopes and upland ridges [Wear, 1998 #322]. The new inhabitants rather than striving for the proximity of kin, are seeking the relative isolation and amenity of distant views afforded by houses built high on forested slopes. Previously farmed land near streams is now reverting to forest as agricultural production is supplanted by service and recreation activities. In short, an aging local population is not being replaced reproductively or economically by descent and area subdividing former agroforestry lands into recreational properties for sale to in-migrants. The result is a gentrification of Appalachia. 39 Newcomers to southern Appalachia are on average wealthier, more highly educated, and have more urban interests than traditional southern Appalachian inhabitants [Gragson, nd #262;Falk, 1988 #258]. They are also older. Most future changes in land use will be based on the need to house and serve this older, wealthier population. There is presently little evidence, however, of state-level initiatives to respond either to the future needs of this population or to the consequences of this shift in age structure and values [Cho, 2003 #239]. ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF AGRICULTURAL TRANSFORMATION In different locations around the world and for various reasons, land once dedicated to agriculture has been abandoned and forest and woody vegetation has expanded. Southern Appalachia is undergoing this very change since the demise of agriculture as a way of life. Our understanding of what this means for regional environments is still limited since we have yet to systematically link the underlying mechanisms to their various long-term ecological consequences. Much of our Coweeta LTER research has been directed at reducing the similar lack of understanding of the cumulative temporal and spatial effects of multiple land uses and land-use change on water quantity, quality and biota. The current failure to link the biophysical and socioeconomic realms seriously constrains efforts to forecast future ecosystem responses or to execute management strategies that anticipate the most likely outcomes of change trajectories. As a first step in correcting this situation, the following section summarizes what we have learned from Coweeta LTER research on the general regional consequences of agricultural land use on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. 40 We preface this discussion by emphasizing the concentrated nature of agricultural transitions to near-stream regions. Flat or gently sloping land comprises less than 5% of the southern Appalachians. Near-stream flat lands are among the most desirable for agriculture, because of the proximity to water and hence potential habitation, easier cultivation at low slopes, and increased fertility and moisture in the colluvial deposits and downslope locations. Near stream areas were the first farmed, had the longest tenure, and the most intense manipulations. Early surveys and aerial photographs show the highest valued and most intensively cultivated row crops, such as tobacco, near streams. Grazing, farming, and living were more common and in these near areas, and resultant modification of riparian vegetation and changes in flow and sediment regimes have cascaded down through the embedded aquatic environments. These near-stream areas bear the heaviest human footprint that continues today. Early transporation networks were easiest to place in the gently sloping near-stream areas, and also served the concentration of agriculture there. Cherokee village sites served by footpaths have given way to farm villages and county centers connected by narrow roads, which in turn have been replaced by local economic centers connecting urban refugees and retirees. With a few notable exceptions, the current settlement patterns and impacts are driven by the history of agricultural land use. Terrestrial Ecosystems In the mesic forests of southern Appalachia, past agricultural land use is associated with a decrease in herbaceous species richness and total herbaceous cover. Where past land use was intense, the cover of liliaceous, old-growth and mesophytic forest herbs is reduced and that of 41 weedy species increased (FIGURE 7). However, life-history characteristics interact strongly with landscape pattern to determine final species distribution in disturbed forests [Pearson, 1998 #294]. Native mesophytic species are less abundant in small patches as they lacked adaptations for long-range dispersal by wind or animals; native species with adaptations for long-range dispersal are equally abundant in small and large patches. Modeling studies based on long-term seed dispersal data demonstrate large differences among tree species in the rates at which they colonize abandoned agricultural land [Clark, 1998 #242]. Even in closed stands only a subset of species predictably disperse seed to open sites. Dispersal limitations appear to be a major obstacle to the rate of spread. Species producing large quantities of well-dispersed seed including Betula, Acer, and Liriodendron, have the advantage [Clark, 1999 #243]. There were undoubtedly indirect effects of agricultural transformation on ecosystems, and converse indirect effects of ecosystems on agricultural transformation. Some of these effects are well-supported while others await investigation. For example, a number of studies have documented an increase in the brown-headed cowbird (Molothrus ater ), a nest parasite of many forest birds, due to increased agriculture (Brittingham and Temple, 1996; Ortega, 1998). Cowbirds forage primarily in open areas, often on invertebrates disturbed by the movements of cattle, and more frequently parasitize birds nesting near forest edges. Increases in agricultural edges and livestock have resulted in substantial declines in many forest bird species, although impacts from the pre-contact period through the Columbian revolution are speculative. Agricultural transitions also affected large herbivore populations. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and eastern elk (Cervus elaphus canadensis) are often the most common species in 42 paleoindian middens (McMichael, 1963; Guilday and Tanner, 1965), and a primary food source prior to agriculture. Both species thrive in a forest/open mosaic, and early journals note extensive habitat manipulation by native Americans to improve deer habitat, (McCabe and McCabe, 1984), although the area, frequency and intensity of deliberate burning is in dispute (Pyne, 2001). Ungulate populations were undoubtedly affected by agricultural expansion and contraction during the Missippian period, but in an unknown and probably unknowable way. Hunting pressures may have decreased due to a shift toward agricultural expansion, or increased due to a net human population increase. Journal entries and economic records provide some estimate of human impacts on these large game species during the second agricultural expansion that took place 1700s and early 1800s, a period straddling the Columbian revolution and early Nationhood periods. Subsistence requirements prior to contact drove deer and elk harvest, and needs for leather may have driven harvest rates more than protein or caloric requirements (Driver, 1969; McCabe and McCabe, 1982). Early contact harvests are generally estimated to be between three and ten deer and a fraction of an elk per person annually, rates that are substantially below levels that would control ungulate populations. Harvest rates increased substantially because hides were the primary commodity through which native Americans could obtain axes, hoes, pots, and other desired manufactured goods. Woodland harvest reached unsustainable proportions during the early nation building period; agricultural development in the coastal region supported a local Euroamerican population, the development of trading centers, and overharvest in as yet uncolonized interior regions. As agriculture and colonization advanced toward the uplands, hide 43 and market hunting increased by both natives and Euroamericans, and continued after native removal to the extirpation of eastern elk, and substantial reduction of eastern deer populations. Agricultural transitions also affect mass, energy, and elemental cycling through ecosystems. As forests were converted to agricultural fields, carbon stored in standing wood and forest floor biomass was lost – live biomass and necromass contain a majority of the labile carbon in southern Appalachian forests. Agricultural production prior to the introduction of commercial mineral fertilizers in the early 1900s [Davidson, 1993 #249] measured as annual dry biomass accumulation is only a small fraction of forest production. Aboveground net primary production in southern Appalachian cove and lowland forest sites typically ranges from 10 to 12 Mg biomass ha-1 year-1 while non-fertilized agricultural plots typically produce less than 2 Mg biomass ha-1 year-1. Productivity on fertilized agricultural sites is higher, but rarely reaches 50% of that observed on forested sites (FIGURE 8). Valley and cove forests potentially have the highest aboveground carbon pools in southern Appalachia. Cove forests, in particular, carry up to 230 Mg C ha-1 [Whittaker, 1966 #227]. However, valley and cove forest sites are also the most impacted by human land use across all time periods save perhaps the last 30 years [Bolstad, 1998 #231;Wear, 1998 #322]. Comparative measurements on such sites in southern Appalachia indicate that aboveground carbon pools on row-crop and pasture sites average approximately 2 Mg C ha-1, which is only a tiny fraction of the 151 Mg C ha-1 found on comparable sites with mature, once-harvested forests [Bolstad, 2001 #232]. 44 Belowground soil carbon loss depends on many factors and across southern Appalachia ranges from low [Kalisz, 1986 #276] to substantial [Bolstad, 2001 #232]. Most of the belowground carbon pool on forest sites is contained in total coarse root and stump carbon [Harris, 1977 #267]. The majority of this pool is lost in the first few decades after such sites are converted to agricultural use. On agricultural sites, carbon losses often increase relative to carbon inputs due to the increase in soil temperature, reduced soil carbon inputs, and the addition of nitrogen fertilizers [Davidson, 1993 #249]. When agricultural use of a site ends and forest is allowed to regrow, much of the aboveground live biomass recovers within the first century. Aboveground necromass recovers more slowly than biomass, but soil carbon recovers even more slowly. It can take from several decades to several centuries to return soil carbon to pre-forest clearing levels [Schlesinger, 1990 #308]. In general, regional carbon stocks decreased in southern Appalachia in concert with increases in agricultural land use from AD 800 to the early 1900s [Delcourt, 1980 #253]. Since 1900, carbon stocks have increased as farms were abandoned, fires were suppressed, and regional manufacturing and service economies replaced agriculture. Soil carbon changes due to changes in land use also affect the habitat quality for understory forest herbs. The result is to lower forest herb diversity and abundance [Pearson, 1998 #294]. The change in soil quality is a consequence of the increased organic matter with greater water-retention capacity, improved aeration and tilth, and enhanced supplies of plant nutrients [Coleman, 1996 #245]. In summary, land use changes have been most complete, intense, and persistent in floodplain and cove sites. This creates numerous potential pathways for impacts to occur on aquatic ecosystems. For example, conversion of forest to agriculture 45 removes trees that both shade and deliver substantial quantities of matter and energy (as leaves and woody litterfall) to streams [Wallace, 1999 #320]. Aquatic Ecosystems The aquatic ecosystems of the southern Appalachians are among the World’s most diverse, due to a number of reasons. The mountains encompass a broad range of elevation and hence climactic regimes, providing both cool, shaded uplands and warmer reaches that border the Piedmont. Higher elevations are geographically isolated, particularly for cool-adapted species, as thermal barriers downstream often prevent or reduce inter-basin migration. The region has never been glaciated and many of the river systems drain to the south, allowing a range shift to southern refugia during preceding glaciation. Fish diversity is high, and mussel diversity among the highest in the World, and particularly imperiled. Damage is due primarily to the twin factors of increased sediment due to farming and development, changes in a suite of characteristics due to dam building, and the introduction of exotic organisms. Places like southern Appalachia where substantial portions of the landscape were in agriculture for decades then abandoned and reforested raise important questions about how much stream ecosystems reflect past vs. current land use. A series of recent Coweeta LTER studies have focused specifically on the legacy of past land use evident in contemporary aquatic systems [Harding, 1998 #65;Jones, 1999 #275]. Forest streams generally have higher diversity and abundance of clean-water benthic macroinvertebrates than streams in agricultural land. However, forest also have lower fish diversity and abundance, largely consisting of introduced rainbow or brown trout that presumably ate or displaced most other species. Agricultural 46 streams do not contain trout, but rather a mixture of native and introduced species that tolerate high levels of fine sediment and higher water temperatures. The best indicator of 1990s stream biodiversity in southern Appalachia is land use in 1950 and certain measures of current stream water quality [Groves, 2002 #207;Scott, 2001 #309]. Most streams on land forested in 1950 had higher biodiversity than streams on agricultural land in 1950 irrespective of land use in 1990. The widespread abandonment of farms across the region means that much of the landscape that is currently forested was farmed in 1950. However, land use change has been largely unidirectional. Many farms were converted to forests, but relatively few new farms were established in forest-covered land [Scott, 2001 #309]. Nevertheless, multivariate analyses of stream faunal communities was used to distinguish sites linked to land in agriculture in 1950, and sites linked to land in forest in 1950 [Harding, 1998 #65], and these groupings cut across current land use. Streams on currently forested land that was farmed within the past 50 years have fish and invertebrate communities comparable to streams on land currently in agricultural use. They are not comparable to streams on forested land that was not cleared within the last 50 years. Despite their appearance, currently forested sites harbor the “ghost of land use past” [Harding, 1998 #65]. The critical determinant is stream substrate important at many life history stages for vertebrate and invertebrate organisms. Therefore, the quality of stream substrate is most strongly related to past not present land use [Scott, 2001 #309, FIGURE 9]. Riparian corridor width has long been considered the most important determinant of the impact of land use on streams. Recent Coweeta LTER research, however, indicates that riparian corridor length may be as important as corridor width [Jones, 1999 #275]. Fish diversity and 47 abundance in sampled streams was most strongly related to the length of unbroken forest immediately upstream from the sampling location. Invasive and sediment-tolerant species were most common where agricultural clearing extended more than one kilometer upstream from the sampling location. They were least common on stream reaches where forest cover prevailed. Linear agricultural patches paralleling streams are associated with higher inputs of stream sediments. As the area and length of upstream agricultural patches increases, fish species that nest on the bottom and do not clean sediment from their nests decreased in abundance while species that keep their nests free of silt increased in abundance. In summary, our findings suggest that nearly 50 years of forest regrowth fail to return southern Appalachian stream biota to that characteristic of forested streams. While agricultural practices and transitions have substantially affected the biotic integrity of aquatic ecosystems, these impacts do little to further to directly constrain or affect land use and human actions. While fish were a mainstay of native diets during long intervals in the pre-contact periods, few material goods were harvested from aquatic ecosystems during the post-European periods. The biotic consequences of agricultural transitions after colonization are in some senses uni-directional, in that the activities have directly changed the functioning of aquatic biota, feedbacks on human action are light, and indirect. The largest impacts are within a context of a cultural appreciation of biodiversity and wild spaces, and attempts to manage public and private land to maintain aquatic biodiversity. While agricultural impacts on the aquatic biota are great but appear largely unidirectional, impacts on physical resources derived from aquatic ecosystems are pervasive and profound. 48 Agriculture altered stream physiography, structure, and transport capacity. Stream bottoms are finer textured, banks more incised, and floodplains expanded due to past farming practices. Floods are higher, more frequent, and occur more quickly than in times past, thereby suggesting more stringent limits to building in floodplains and other flood-prone areas. CONSERVATION IN SOUTHERN APPALACHIA The gentrification of southern Appalachia in combination with the legacy of past land use practices on contemporary terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems has important implications for regional conservation. Are they reactive or anticipatory? Do they focus on integrative systems, or on rescuing biophysical systems to the exclusion of socioeconomic systems? To begin answering these questions we concentrate in this section on characterizing the nature of contemporary conservation efforts in southern Appalachia. We do this based largely on an assessment of web information presented by the 81 conservation organization currently active in southern Appalachia. The 81 identified organizations range from national in scope, with and without local chapters, through site-based organizations: National 19 (7.1%), Regional 14 (5.2%), State 15 (5.6%), Local 30 (11.2%), and Site 3 (1.1%). In total, they target some 267 conservation-related issues, but these can be classified into 15 overarching classes. When the dominant scope of the organization (National to Site) is related to issue classes (TABLE 9) clear priorities emerge. Growth is somewhat of an exception (i.e., urban sprawl, development, etc.) since it is addressed by organizations of both national and local scope. 49 Local groups often serve as watchdog organizations targeting disturbance activities such as asphalt plants, chipmills, powerlines, solid waste incinerators and landfills. They may also advocate improved planning of forests, wilderness and recreation areas. Most are isolated from any regional or national umbrella organization and are typically run by unpaid volunteers. Once the issue that galvanized the formation of the group is resolved they may cease to operate by decision or lack of interest. This means a high turnover through time in presence and activity of local groups. In some cases, local groups may build a lasting organization by reflecting regional visions and fomenting public involvement. Such organizational transformation is evident in watershed organizations such as the Chattooga Conservancy and the New River Community Partners. While local in scope, they were nevertheless able to continue their activities once they achieved the Wild or Heritage River designation they sought by putting forth a vision for the future of their target watersheds. They did this by prioritizing their efforts to fend off incompatible land uses and taking concrete steps toward achieving the vision. In a similar manner, smaller watershed organizations such as RiverLink and Friends of the Clinch and Broad Rivers moved from activism to community service by redefining their objectives as public education, and organizing cleanup days and citizen water quality monitoring. Such activities also help these organizations receive government and corporate funding further contributing to their transformation from activism to service. Local groups, usually with little or no paid staff, do most of their work through volunteer community action. Selected national organizations with state chapters such as the Sierra Club try to maintain the grassroots approach. This is also true of state-level organizations that grew out of local organizations such as the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project and the 50 Carolina Farm Stewardship Association that support farmers wanting to grow food sustainably. Other state-level organizations are more professionally organized and fill an advocacy role through legislative lobbying and calls for action. However, they do not necessarily organize people to take the action advocated. For example, the Georgia Conservancy's website has a section on its “About Us” page entitled “How you can help” that includes “Join us” by becoming a paid member and “Support us” by giving greater financial support. Coalitions of local and national organizations often promote state legislation and politics as autonomous units such as the League of Conservation Voters. Regional organizations tend to fall into one of three categories: forest issue groups, climate change and air quality groups, and support service groups. Forestry issue groups are wellorganized, active and interconnected. They include organizations such as the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project, the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition, and the Dogwood Alliance. These three organizations work together closely using grassroots strategies. They monitor timber sales, the designation of wilderness areas, the listing of endangered species and forest product marketing campaigns. Appalachian Voices is a membership organization focused on many of the same issues, but is also the most visible group in the Blue Ridge fighting mountaintop removal. Katuah Earth First! is a regional network of activists. Its largest presence is in Tennessee where members focus on forest and nuclear issues using highly visible and often illegal tactics. The current Bush administration's changes to the Clean Air Act have recently focused conservation efforts on air quality issues in southern Appalachia. The New Source Review 51 (NSR) regulations of the Clean Air Act require power companies and other industrial facilities to install advanced emission controls when undertaking major modifications that would significantly increase their emissions. The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and the Canary Coalition are regional groups focused on “green power” legislation and coal-fired power plants at the state level, and New Source Review and climate change at the federal level. The effectiveness of such organizations and their proposals on air quality are highly variable. This is a function of the inherent uncertainty of the issues, the ambiguity of the regulations themselves, and the internal or external scientific expertise these organizations can draw on. Regional-scale organizations are also notable for providing conservation support services to other organizations. WildLaw and the Southern Environmental Law Center provide staff-based legal support for many of the issues worked on by other groups particularly those focused on endangered species and national forest timber sales. The Project for Appalachian Community and Environment is a staff-based group offering GIS and imagery support for environmental groups in southern Appalachia. SouthWings is an organization of volunteer pilots offering a wide range of piloting services to environmental organizations in the region. National organizations active in southern Appalachia tend to be those with local chapters or local affiliates working with grassroots volunteers. The Sierra Club is the paradigm for such a group as it straddles the boundary between a local grassroots and a large national organization. The same is true of The National Forest Protection Alliance. Both organizations work on forestry, air quality and education issues. Staff-based national advocacy organizations are much less active in the region. While their websites may place southern Appalachia within an ecoregional 52 panorama, local participation is generally limited to supporters sending money. Exceptions are organizations focused on national parks such as the National Parks Conservation Association working in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There are two types of site-based organization operating in the region. These are eco-villages and land trusts. Eco-villages are intentional communities of conservation-minded people living a sustainable lifestyle, e.g., Earthaven Eco-Village, and Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center. Only a minute percentage of the population of the region live in eco-villages, but the approach of such groups is notable. Instead of activism, residents of these centers seek to build a sustainable village that others might join or mimic. They also offer educational programs in permaculture, sustainable design and folk arts. Land trusts are supported by a different clientele than other conservation organizations, but are united in their strategy of conservation through preservation of real property. Land trusts need money, and people like to see and live near where their money is used. For example, the greatest concentration of land trust organizations in the region is in and around Highlands, NC. This is an historically wealthy pocket in southern Appalachia. Nevertheless, there is a strong support network for land trusts in southern Appalachia and there are local-, state-, regional- and nationallevel organizations. The Conservation Trust for North Carolina is a service organization helping to form and operate local land trusts. Forestry is the most significant concern for conservation organizations in southern Appalachia. The origin of this interest is the move within the last 15 years of the forest industry from the 53 Pacific Northwest to the Southeast. The identified conservation issues revolve around fighting chipmills, invasive species, timber sales on public lands, logging, road building, the Bush administration's “Healthy Forest Initiative,” and Revised Statute 2477 (i.e., a loophole allowing counties to claim nearly anything as an abandoned right-of-way where a road can be built). Some organizations focus on positive mechanisms. They concentrate on designating wilderness areas, protecting roadless areas, promoting sustainable private forestry, designating critical habitats for endangered species, reforming the US Forest Service, and developing national recreation areas. All these issues coalesce in the 114-page document drafted by the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition entitled “Return the Great Forest.” This document advocates establishing an interconnected network of wildlands covering 2.8 million acres in southern Appalachia. The plan is endorsed by more than 200 stakeholders and identifies concrete steps to be taken by funders, legislators and the public. There is a notable absence of organizations in southern Appalachia concerned with issues related to urban sprawl and smart growth. Some groups have organized to stop roads, such as the North Shore Road in Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Such activities have been primarily carried out in the context of a focused effort at combating forest fragmentation. Virginians for Appropriate Roads (a chapter of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League) concentrates its efforts on stopping two proposed highways in southwestern Virginia. Local groups of the Sierra Club have included land-use and transportation in their efforts, but these are tangential to their other activities and also typically restricted in their area of influence. In general, there is a true lack of attention to the systematic problem of sprawling development now occurring throughout the region and taking place not only adjacent to cities, but also in what are officially “rural” 54 areas. Smart Growth Partners of Western North Carolina is one of the few organizations with a specific urban outlook, although it is restricted to the Asheville area. CONCLUSION This overview of the agricultural transformation of southern Appalachia clearly reveals how humans have insinuated themselves into regional biophysical systems at all levels. The spatial and temporal patterns of ecological systems bear the signature of human activities and institutions; however, it is also true that human activities and institutions have been shaped by the ecological systems in which they are embedded. This reciprocal imprinting means that the artificial separation of the two components will fail to improve sustainability of either the landscape of the quality of life. The general linear reality view of how and why events occur in either realm continues to underpin regional historiography, environmental studies and conservation efforts. Our multiscalar, historical and comparative approach to the agricultural transformation of southern Appalachia is the beginning of a reconciliation of the socioeconomic and biophysical realms. This pattern-based assessment within the framework of narrative positivism is the first step toward developing knowledge of general processes and relationships. Our next step is more analytical and will focus on the network and hierarchy of specific commodity classes at finer temporal and spatial scales. The objective of this subsequent study is to establish the trajectory and turning points between AD 1850 and 2000 that we can use to identify transformation signatures. From this basis it will then be possible to formulate high probability forecasts of future ecosystem and socioeconomic responses. Decision-makers will then be in the position of 55 defining and executing management decisions that truly anticipate the most likely outcomes of change. New references by bolstad Brittingham, M.C. and S.A. Temple. 1996. Vegetation around Parasitized and Non-Parasitized Nests Within Deciduous Forest. J. of Field Ornithology, 67(3): 406-413. Driver, H.E., 1969. Indians of North America. University of Chicago Press, 632 p. Guilday, J.E., and D.P. Tanner. 1965. Vertebrate remains from the Mount Carbon Site (46 Fa 7), Fayette County, West Virginia. West Virginia Archeology, 18:1-14. McMichael, E.V., 1963. 1963 excavations at the Buffalo Site, 46 PU 31, West Virginia Archeology, 16:12-23. Ortega, C.P. 1998. Cowbirds and Other Brood Parasites. University of Arizona Press. Pyne, S.J., 2001. Fire, a brief history, University of Washington Press, 224 p. Citations on Tables/Figures: [Shulman, 1999 #338;Bogue, 1976 #337;Cridlebaugh, 1984 #339;Davis, 2000 #132;Otto, 1989 #162;Salstrom, 1994 #168;Ward, 1999 #78;Newman, 1979 #115;Goodwin, 1977 #112;Fischer, 1989 #185;Winters, 1987 #190;Nelson, 1955 #335;Keever, 1953 #336;Foster, 1908 #334]
© Copyright 2024 Paperzz