The plot is located roughly 30 m above the Gauley River ca. 1.25 miles upriver is the Summersville Dam. Much of the riverside from here and there is variations of a flat rock community. The community we are in has continued pretty much from where we started walking downstream for the last mile or so.;Steep S facing lower gorge slope above a small slow stretch of river. Cool, moist and shady forest a mixture of deciduous trees and Tsuga canadensis with a near impenetrable shrub layer of Rhododendron maximum. Depauperate herb layer. Little if any sign of any recent man made disturbance. The forest doesn't appear very old and has a lot of Liriodendron in the T2 layer.
Representativeness
Large patch of Hemlock-Deciduous forest over Great Laurel. This I believe will be the matrix forest community in the GARI gorge. Plot was placed to sample ELU 1133.