Releve Virginia Division of Natural Heritage, see http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/natural_heritage/documents/nh_plotform_instructions.pdf
Overall Taxon Cover Values are Automatically Calculated?
no
Plot Quality Fields:
Plot Validation Level
(2) classification plot: sufficient for inclusion in a classification revision
Overall Plot Vegetation Fields:
Tree Cover
50
%
Shrub Cover
50
%
Field Cover
5
%
Misc Fields:
Observation Narrative
A weakly submesotrophic Quercus velutina- and Quercus montana-dominated forest on a warm south aspect. This stand has regenerated after some catastrophic removal of the canopy, perhaps by fire or perhaps logging long ago (there was at least one iron mine in the area in the last century). As typical for young forests on infertile to somewhat fertile, not too convex sites with south to southeast aspects, young Quercus velutina is dominant. This plot is on the south side of what soil scientist Doug Slabaugh calls a "whaleback," a low, short, rounded anticlinal ridge at the foot of the main sandstone-capped Peters Mountain ridge. Whalebacks have a core of Ordovician limestones around which are folded shale formations. The limestones are in some cases exposed by erosion, as it appears to be on the crest (see GJNF337) of this whaleback, and in a ravine cutting into the whaleback from the west (see GJNF333). The community of this plot appears to not be on limestone-derived soil, though the soil tests more fertile than one would expect on such a dry, hot, steep aspect and with the influence of fire, where one would expect abundant heaths and probably yellow pine on a poorer soil (cf. GJNF336).
Plot located ca. 1.25 mi east of Hematite, approximately halfway down south-facing slope of "whaleback," just east of poorly defined spur ridge.
