Carolina Environmental Diversity Explorations
Elevations and forest types · By Dirk Frankenberg
From northern hardwood to spruce-fir forest
Figure 11. The conifer trees of the spruce-fir forest are easily identified by their darker color. (Photograph by the author. More about the photograph)
The highest elevations of the Blue Ridge are occupied by an evergreen forest of spruce and fir that looks like the great conifer forests of northern Maine and Canada. The transition from northern hardwoods to spruce fir forest is easy to see from a distance because the softwood evergreen trees are much darker green than the hardwoods. This dark color is the basis for the name Black Mountain Range given to the highest ridge in the province. This ridge includes Mount Mitchell, the highest point in the United States east of the Mississippi.
The transition zone is shown in Figure 11. Note the conifers growing at low elevation on the north slope of the ridge in the center of the photograph, but higher on the south-facing slope on the right. You can see here how slope and exposure control of distribution of forest types. Note also the thin line of Glassmine Falls in the lower left corner. Glassmine Falls drops into a narrow valley that separates the west-facing slope of the Black Mountain Range in the background from the south-facing slope that appears at the right of the photograph.
