SC Heritage Trust Program), and staff of the NRCS field offices in Allendale and Barnberg Counties for help in locating and gaining access to study sites on private and state lands. At the SC Land Resouces Division in Columbia, Bobbie Adams and Jeff Brantley provided generous access to aerial photography and maps, and Richard Scharf supplied advice on South Carolina soils; they all made the map room on Devine Street a great place to work. We also thank John Nelson of the University of South Carolina's Moore Herbarium for helpful assistance. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the landowners and land managers who gave us permission to survey the Carolina bays on their properties. This research was supported by USFS Cooperative Research Agreement No. 29-1280 between the Southern Forest Station (J. Walker, Designated Station Rep.) and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee); thanks to John Blake, Savannah River Forest Station, for supporting and facilitating this agreement.to verify these patterns. Thus in 1995-96, we expanded the survey of bay vegetation both on the SRS and in the surrounding region of the western Upper Coastal Plain of South Carolina. Through explicit analysis within a landscape context, we sought to identify patterns of community diversity and the environmental correlates of those patterns.This report addresses four project objectives: Gradient model of Carolina bay vegetation on the SRS:We use ordination analyses to identify environmental and landscape factors that are correlated with vegetation composition. Significant factors can provide a framework for site-based conservation of existing diversity, and they may also be usefwl site predictors for potential vegetation in bay restorations. Regional analysis of Carolina bay vegetation diversity:We expand the ordination analyses to assess the degree to which SRS bays encompass the range of vegetation diversity found in the regional landscape of South Carolina's western Upper Coastal Plain. Such comparisons can indicate floristic status relative to regional potentials and identify missing species or community elements that might be re-introduced or restored. ClassiJication of vegetation communities in Upper Coastal Plain bays:We use cluster analysis to identify plant community-types at the regional scale, and explore how this classification may be functional with respect to significant environmental and landscape factors. An environmentally-based classification at the whole-bay level can provide a system of "templates" for managing bays as individual units and for restoring bays to desired plant communities. Qualitative model for bay vegetation dynamics:We analyze present-day vegetation in relation to historic land uses and disturbances. The distinctive history of SRS bays provides the possibility of assessing pathways of post-disturbance succession. We attempt to develop a coarse-scale model of vegetation shifts in response to changing site factors; such qualitative models can provide a basis for suggesting management interventions that may be neede...
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