In the year 2000 Rob Messick, an independent old-growth researcher working with the Western North Carolina Alliance, will publish a report titled Old-Growth Forest Communities of the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest. This report will add significantly to knowledge about old-growth forests on public lands outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The result of field studies by Messick and numerous old-growth researchers in western North Carolina, the report presents the known sites in the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest.

Photography by Robert Messick Red Spruce Forest Northern Hardwood Rich Cove Forests Hemlock Oriented Forests Oak Oriented Forests Dry Oak-Pine Carolina Hemlock Forest

They collectively form the second largest old-growth acreage in the Blue Ridge Province. The report will include statistics on the known old-growth in these areas, subdivided by location and forest type.

The geographic clusters found to have the greatest old-growth acreage were the Grandfather Cluster in the Pisgah National Forest and the Topton Cluster in the Nantahala National Forest. The Grandfather Cluster is located in the upper Catawba River basin on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It is northeast of Asheville, North Carolina. Messick wrote a report in 1997 titled Old Growth Forest Communities in the Grandfather District of Pisgah National Forest, which pulled together three years of field work in this large district. Updates and corrections of this work have been included in the final report. The Topton Cluster is an area roughly twelve miles in diameter, found between the towns of Andrews and Franklin in southwestern North Carolina.

Both of these areas have some of the roughest topography found in western North Carolina. The unique structural geology, and large number of rock types in these areas provide at least a partial explanation of why a significant number of old-growth sites were missed by early logging operations. The extensive old-growth acreage and variety of forest communities in these areas result in a strong representation of the mid-elevation forest types common to the region. Seven forest types comprise eighty percent of old-growth occurences in the Nantahala-Pisgah NF as a whole. In order of abundance these types include: dry oak, submesic oak, rich cove (mixed mesophytic), acidic cove, high elevation northern red oak, northern hardwood, and dry oak-pine. The Grandfather and Topton Clusters have a similar spread of these seven forest types, though with different abundances.

We shall announce the publication of Old-Growth Forest Communities of the Nantahala-Pisgah National Forest on this Web site. A summary will be available, but only a limited number of copies of the full report will be printed. Therefore, copies of the full report with the site catalog will be reserved for scientists and organizations that require detailed descriptions. Meanwhile, we present a selection of photographs taken by Messick in the course of his field work. The photographs emphasize large diameter trees and the variety of forest communities that are a striking feature of western North Carolina old-growth.

Red Spruce Forest

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Red Spruce 83.5cm dbh

Red Spruce 97cm dbh

Northern Hardwood

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Yellow Birch 104cm dbh

Yellow Birch 98cm dbh

Yellow Birch 87.5cm dbh

Rich Cove Forest

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Black Cherry 89cm dbh	Yellow Buckeye 134cm dbh	White Ash 121cm dbh	Tulip Poplar 164cm dbh
Sugar Maple 79cm dbh	Yellow Buckeye 90cm dbh	Fraser Magnolia 97.5cm dbh

Hemlock Oriented Forests

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Eastern Hemlock 115cm dbh	Red Maple 117cm dbh	Black Birch 87.5cm dbh	Black Gum 75cm dbh
American Beech 92.5cm dbh	Eastern Hemlock 108cm dbh	White Pine 112.5cm dbh

Oak Oriented Forests

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White Oak 107cm dbh	Northern Red Oak 94cm dbh	Chestnut Oak 141cm dbh	Black Oak 126cm dbh
Northern Red Oak 123.5cm dbh	Pignut Hickory 98cm dbh	Tulip Poplar 150cm dbh

Dry Oak Pine

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Shortleaf Pine 61.5 cm dbh

Carolina Hemlock Forest

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Carolina Hemlock 92cm dbh

Page design by Joseph Gaeddert
This page was last updated 1/27/00

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