A Synthesis of Rights-of-way Native Plant Communities: Identifying Their Relevance to Historical and Contemporary Piedmont Savannas

Abstract

The presettlement Piedmont landscape supported an apparent abundance of fire-maintained landscapes, including Piedmont savannas. A loss of fire on the natural landscape led to a decline of fire-tolerant, sun-loving native herbaceous plants that had persisted for thousands of years. These plants are now restricted to few natural areas, and a suite of rights-of-way where frequent mowing has favored them. There is great interest within the conservation community in restoring these management-intensive savanna landscapes. Thirty-one rural rights-of-way displaying savanna-like herbaceous vegetation in the North Carolina Piedmont were surveyed in order to build a reference for managers wishing to restore savannas. Four distinct vegetative groups and their environmental preferences were identified. This information was then used to determine which group(s) should be prescribed for a restoration site at Mason Farm Biological Reserve.

Abstract from the paper’s OpenAlex record, shown for indexing and research. Copyright remains with the authors or the publisher. Read at the source ↗

The text the model read, with the source record’s inline markup (italics, sub- and superscripts) rendered and its character entities decoded; quote offsets refer to the raw text.