Most common in the Coastal Plain, headwater forests develop at the beginning of creeks and streams and are the most numerous of the state's wetlands. While not diverse biologically, they have the greatest effect on water quality of all the wetlands.
Melissa Dowland recounts her experience with three different types of large mammals in Eastern North Carolina. Dowland describes her various encounters with black bears, otters, and bobcats and the signs that told her they were nearby.
A forest of red spruces and Fraser firs covers 72,000 acres of land atop the North Carolina mountains. The spruce-fir ecosystem is dying due to poisons man has put into the air that often fall back as acid rain.
Living at Linville Gorge’s cliff are plants revealing ancient ecosystems long unknown and trees a retired Appalachian State professor believes are a millennium old. Support for his perspective of cliffs, which include their ecological as well as geological aspects, is a profile of the Table Mountain Pine, in addition to plants like Rock Tripe Lichen and Mountain Golden Heather.