Carolina Bays are unique elliptical depressional wetlands that are abundant in the Atlantic Coastal Plain, particularly in North Carolina. A large percentage of these bays have been ditched, drained, logged, or otherwise disturbed by humans in the past 200 years. Currently, Carolina Bay restoration provides a means for mitigating wetlands lost to development. The purpose of this study was to characterize compositional variation of vegetation relative to gradients of environmental conditions in three Carolina Bays in order to provide reference data for restoring impacted bays. Within three unaltered Carolina Bays, soil sampling, water table monitoring, and vegetation assessments were conducted. Four community types were identified: pond pine woodland, non-riverine swamp forest, high pocosin, and bay forest. Distributions of these community types were strongly correlated to depth of organic material and associated soil properties and hydrologic regimes. Pond pine woodland dominated mineral soils; both pond pine woodland and nonriverine swamp forest were found on histic and shallow organic soils; both high pocosin and bay forest were found on deep organic soils. Examination of the data included simple averaging, single factor analyses of variance, Fisher?s protected least significant differences, chi-square tests of independence, cluster analyses, and ordination procedures. The application of this material was intended for a North Carolina Department of Transportation Carolina Bay mitigation project and future Carolina Bay restoration projects in this region.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-08122004-155502 |
| Date | 13 August 2004 |
| Creators | Lees, Britta |
| Contributors | Dr. Thomas R. Wentworth, Dr. Jon M. Stucky, Dr. Michael J. Vepraskas |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-08122004-155502/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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