Blue Ridge Mountains

Two of the rural regions currently undergoing dramatic landscape change are the Sierra Nevadas, John Muir’s “Range of Light,” and the Blue Ridge Mountains, described by John Denver in his song “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” These are mythical landscapes, the Sierras of television’s “Bonanza” and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Mount Airy, North Carolina, television’s “Mayberry.” These are landscapes on opposite sites of the USA yet undergoing similar transformations. The Sierra Nevada is a 400-mile-long stretch of extraordinary beauty and landscape diversity. Approximately two thirds of the bird and mammal species and one half of all the reptile and amphibian species in California are found here. The world’s largest living plants, the Giant Sequoia, are found there, as is the tenth deepest freshwater lake in the world, Lake Tahoe. Almost two thirds of the range (12.6 million acres) is publicly owned and lies in three national parks – Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon – nine national forests, and the lands of the Bureau of Land Management. The remaining one third is privately owned. These are some of the most heavily used public lands in the country. Yosemite National Park alone attracts 4 million visitors a year (The Wilderness Society 2004, 1). Twenty-one counties comprise the Sierra Nevada region. It is estimated that 40 million people live within a half-day’s drive of the Sierra Nevada. Between 1970 and 1998, the resident population in the Sierra nearly tripled, rising from 237,000 to 664,000. It is estimated that by 2020, more than 1 million people will call the Sierra home. Some estimate that the portion of landscape set aside for human settlement by the year 2040 will quadruple from today’s measure (Steinicke and Hofmann 2004, 12). This counter-urbanization has been compared by Ernst Steinicke to a similar pattern in the eastern Alps centuries ago. In the East, the Sierras find a parallel in the southern Appalachian region. The Southern Appalachians stretch from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to just north of Atlanta, Georgia, a distance of almost 600 miles. Along the crest lie the Appalachian Trail, made famous in Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, and the Blue Ridge Parkway, America’s first scenic highway. The southern Appalachians are also home to Great Smoky Mountain National Park, the most visited national park in the USA with 4 million visitors per year. It is estimated that 100 million people live within a half-day’s drive of the Southern Appalachian forests (Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition 2002, 10).

Soil chronosequence of brasstown creek, Blue Ridge mountains, USA

“In the Blue Ridge Mountains ….”

Exotic forest insects and pathogens (EFIP) have become regular features of temperate forest ecosystems, yet we lack a long-term perspective on their net impacts on tree mortality, carbon sequestration, and tree species diversity. Here, we analyze 3 decades (1987–2019) of forest monitoring data from the Blue Ridge Mountains ecoregion in eastern North America, including 67 plots totaling 29.4 ha, along with a historical survey from 1939. Over the past century, EFIP substantially affected at least eight tree genera. Tree host taxa had anomalously high mortality rates (≥ 6% year−1 from 2008 to 2019 vs 1.4% year−1 for less-impacted taxa). Following the arrival of EFIP, affected taxa declined in abundance (− 25 to − 100%) and live aboveground biomass (AGB; − 13 to − 100%) within our monitoring plots. We estimate that EFIP were responsible for 21–29% of ecosystem AGB loss through mortality (− 87 g m−2 year−1) from 1991 to 2013 across 66 sites. Over a century, net AGB loss among affected species totaled roughly 6.6–10 kg m−2. The affected host taxa accounted for 23–29% of genera losses at the plot scale, with mixed net effects on α-diversity. Several taxa were lost from our monitoring plots but not completely extirpated from the region. Despite these losses, both total AGB and α-diversity were largely recovered through increases in sympatric genera. These results indicate that EFIP have been an important force shaping forest composition, carbon cycling, and diversity. At the same time, less-affected taxa in these relatively diverse temperate forests have conferred substantial resilience with regard to biomass and α-diversity.

Editor’s note: This post is part of an ongoing series written for Health Affairs Blog by local leaders from communities honored with the annual Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Prize. In 2014, six winning communities were selected by RWJF from more than 250 applicants and celebrated for placing a priority on health and creating powerful partnerships to drive change. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, at the junction of the Swannanoa and French Broad Rivers, Asheville, N.C. is graced with natural beauty and an abundance of health and economic resources. But in 2012, many residents of Asheville and the surrounding Buncombe County area were struggling with poverty and chronic illness. So the community responded as advocates, public health experts, community leaders, and business leaders came together to establish a culture of health. As County Health Director Gibbie Harris explained, “the thing that is really driving us forward is an interest in being the healthiest community in the country… We have people who are interested in social justice, and a desire to improve the lives of our friends and neighbors.”

Timelapse photos of cloud cover during the 21 August 2017 solar eclipse. Location: a small valley in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, near Charlottesville, VA. Photos were taken using a GoPro camera looking facing approximately SW every 5 seconds between 12:00 - 16:00 EDT (local time).

remarkable state of preservation. There was not a trace of offensive odor. When me mounds of soapsuds subsided, I knelt down and brushed die hair out of his eyes. The skin was a slight off-white color and slightly oily to the touch. Only the eyes seemed glaringly unnatural . They were wide open and the pupiliris was glazed over with the soap, no color showing at all. I was reminded of a marble statue. The eyebrows softened me statue effect somewhat as did die mouth and general facial expression. Oddly enough, his mouth was closed naturally, his lips neither drawn or puckered . None of his teeth were revealed. Objectively, I can not say diere was a smile on his face, but I certainly can say mat he now appeared serene and at peace. Perhaps die smile would have come through if there had been some color in his eyes. The body was dressed in regulation Navy skivvies and the lettering "Jessie Adlons CaM 1/c" was stenciled in regulation manner on both bottom and top pieces. Jessie had gained considerable weight over the years. AU his fatty tissues were now soap. In addition to the saponification process that had taken place, strong alkali had infiltrated and preserved all otiier tissues. In this case die process had been extremely diorough because of die moderately strong lye solution provided by wood ashes and water. In addition die head produced by die adjacent fireplace had hastened and facilitated die process. Apparently, Jessie had been planning this symbolic return to the Arizona for some time. Maybe he had planned it from the time he secluded himself on Joe's Branch. I was amazed at his skill in concealing the construction from me. He had to be driven by a desperate and all consuming desire. The overwhelming guilt of his tormented mind had forced this final bizarre course of action on him. He wanted to suffer as his dead shipmates had, a slow death from asphyxia . Perhaps, too, even in death, he desired to cleanse his soul of die awful black guilt that resisted all cleansing in life. The burning candles had robbed him of oxygen and as each had burned out, representing a dying shipmate, he, too, in the end was released from the inner agony that had been with him all diese years. I had Jessie buried in our family plot on the point at the mouth of Joe's Branch. His grave is on the back part of me cemetery under a grove of pawpaw trees. The Last Miracle The only miracle left in the universe is me moment me moon breaks free and levitates like a great copper ball inches above the Blue Ridge Mountains. The highway peels away and the car surges upward dirough space seconds before me mountains lurch back and the moon slams flat against the clouds like a round of construction paper pasted on die ceiling of night. -Beth George 40 ...

The small up country farms of Southern Appalachia were slowly fading away during the early twentieth century, but pockets of self-sufficient farms re? mained in places like the northern Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. These farmers, responsive to the constraints of the mountain landscape that surrounded them, tended to rely on less invasive, century-old technologies to work their fields. Although contemporaries widely disparaged this way of life, the records of these communities reflect a long history of viability and suggest that the ecological basis ofupcountry agriculture was strong. This ar? ticle, which is part of a larger project that studies the transition from small farms to publicly owned forests in Appalachia, analyzes the agricultural pat? terns within five Blue Ridge Mountain hollows and the economies of subsis? tence farming in the early twentieth century.

This chapter focuses on Christendom College, a small Catholic college in Virginia. Founded in 1977 and with 540 students, Christendom is unapologetic in what it terms its “fidelity to the Catholic magisterium,” meaning that it demands all of its students to finish a core curriculum that is heavy with Catholic theology and philosophy courses. More interesting in terms of this book’s focus, Christendom is committed to what scholars term “integralism”: the belief that the First Amendment to the US Constitution was a mistake, and the church and state should be united, with the Catholic Church as the official religious body. As its mission statement declares: “Our college takes its name from the word that embodies the Christian social and political ideal: a society, a culture, a government in which Christ the King reigns.”

This poem explores the cyclical process of life and questions the mythology behind humanity’s central position in our narrative of that cycle. The poem uses a small spring high in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is one of the sources of the Chattahoochee River, as a metaphor for a circular, rather than linear, understanding of nature and ecology, time, and being.

Spotlighting William Alexander Darity, Sr., PhD Claudia Baquet, MD, MPH (bio) Dr. William Alexander Darity, Sr. is Professor Emeritus and Dean Emeritus of Public Health at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst School of Public Health. A native of North Carolina, Dr. Darity has been a leader and pioneer in the fields of international health, operations research, and minority health and has advanced the fields of public health and advocacy as well as tobacco control. Dr. Darity was born January 15, 1924 in Flat Rock, North Carolina, a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Dr. Darity completed his formal studies in North Carolina, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree from Shaw University and a Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) degree from North Carolina Central University. He became the first African American to receive a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1964. Dr. Darity accepted an Associate Professor appointment at the University of Massachusetts– Amherst in 1963. At that time, the small Department of Public Health, which offered a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree with a concentration in Environmental Health, had three full-time faculty members. He was appointed head of the department in 1968 and then Dean in the School of Health Sciences in September 1973. In addition to the Division of Public Health (an accredited School of Public Health) and a Division of Nursing (an accredited School of Nursing), this newly created School of Health Sciences included a Department of Communications Disorders, which offered majors and graduate study in audiology and speech and language disorders. At his urging upon his retirement, the Division of Public Health became a School of Public Health with its own dean, and the Division of Nursing became a School of Nursing with its own dean. Under Dr. Darity’s aegis, the Division of Public Health was expanded widely to offer a Master of Science degree with concentrations in Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Community Health Education, Environmental Health and Health Administration. In addition, a PhD program, which offered concentrations in the above areas, was also developed under his leadership. In addition, a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree was developed to meet the needs of working professionals who sought further their education to better prepare them for professional practice. A Master of Science in Public Health Nutrition, offered jointly by the Division of Public Health and the Department of Food and Science Nutrition, was also developed during Dr. Darity’s tenure. This pioneer’s last major responsibility at the University of Massachusetts was Principal Investigator of a $3.4 million, five-year research study on Smoking and Cancer [End Page 3] in Black populations, funded by the National Cancer Institute. This landmark study examined middle-income and low-income Blacks and factors influencing smoking adoption and associated health risks. Dr. Darity’s leadership at the University of Massachusetts Division of Public Health as an accredited school continued for 16 years until 1989. Dr Darity was named a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in October 1996 and received the Alumni Achievement Award from Shaw University in 1997. (He had previously received an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree from Shaw University in 1990.) Immediately prior to his appointment at the University of Massachusetts, Dr. Darity served as Director of Program Development for the North Carolina Fund, Inc. (a statewide, privately funded, non-profit, anti-poverty organization). His extensive international experience included 10 years with the World Health Organization (WHO), a specialized agency of the United Nations. His tenure with WHO included teaching at the American University of Beirut School of Public Health in Lebanon and the University of Alexandria Higher Institute of Public Health in Egypt. Dr. Darity also served as a Health Consultant with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Arab Refugees and as a WHO Regional Advisor for 17 countries in the Eastern Mediterranean Region, which included 11 Arab countries, as well as Israel, Cyprus, Iran, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Pakistan and West Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Dr. Darity also played a major role as a consultant with WHO in establishing the first Master...

Both as a private citizen living at the foot of the eastern slope of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains and as a public architect of nationhood, Thomas Jefferson witnessed and wrought extraordinary changes in a burgeoning nation. In 1774, Jefferson purchased 157 acres of land in Virginia, including Natural Bridge, for 20 shillings. This private purchase demonstrated Jefferson’s interest in protecting and utilizing the American landscape, echoed later in the public acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase, which Jefferson oversaw in 1803 as the third president of the United States. Jefferson’s particular dedication to Virginia is further evidenced by Monticello, his lifelong home and farm; Poplar Forest, his private retreat; and the University of Virginia, which he established and designed....

Four pedons in the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina were studied to determine the mineralogy and weathering in soils in the southern Appalachians. These soils formed in weathered gniess or schist and receive as much as 2160 mm of annual precipitation. Gibbsite increased with increasing slope, elevation, and rainfall, and ranged from 60 to 670 g kg −1 of the clay fraction (<2.0 µm) and was as high as 140 g kg −1 of the whole soil (<2.0 mm). Gibbsite is thought to form from weathering of feldspars. Kaolinite ranged from 0 to 470 g kg −1 in clay fractions and was as high as 380 g kg −1 of the whole soil. Kaolinite appears to be the product of biotite kaolinization. Hydroxy‐Al interlayered vermiculite (HIV) was the dominant clay mineral in surface horizons, with randomly interstratified mica‐vermiculite and mica increasing with depth. All four soils met the requirements of the oxidic mineralogy class. Release of Fe from kaolinization of biotite, abundance of gibbsite, and fine‐loamy particle‐size class of these soils cause them to have quite high oxidic ratios. However, the high weatherable mineral content of these soils is not consistent with the oxidic mineralogy concept that is supposed to represent soils in an advanced weathering stage. If the oxidic class is to separate out intensely weathered soils, then some amendments must be made to exclude less‐weathered soils similar to the ones of this study. A maximum of 10% weatherable minerals is proposed as an additional criterion for the oxidic class.

A study of the radial increment growth of native eastern white pine (Pinusstrobus L.) evaluated the possible effects of oxidant air pollution (primarily ozone) in long-term growth of forest species in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Ten plots of three white pines of reproducing age (one each classified as tolerant, intermediate, and sensitive to ozone on a foliar basis) were sampled. Plots were dispersed over 446 km from the northern end of the Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park to the southern most part of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. Mean annual radial increment growth of the ozone sensitive trees was significantly smaller (P = 0.01) than that of tolerant trees for the period 1955–1978. Mean increment growth of all trees, regardless of their sensitivity to ozone, decreased during the period. Precipitation was positively correlated with radial growth in all sensitivity classes prior to 1964, but negatively correlated after 1964.

Geomorphic response to historical agriculture at Monument Hill in the Blue Ridge Foothills of Central Virginia