Land use legacies and the future of southern Appalachia

Southern Appalachian forests have apparently recovered from extractive land use practices during the 19th and 20th centuries, yet the legacy of this use endures in terrestrial and aquatic systems of the region. The focus on shallow time or the telling of stories about the past circumscribes the ability to anticipate the most likely outcomes of the trajectory of change forecast for the Southeast as the Old South continues its transformation into the New South. We review land use research of the Coweeta Long Term Ecological Research ( LTER) project that addresses the nature and extent of past and present human land use, how land use has affected the structure and function of terrestrial and aquatic communities, and the forces guiding the anticipated trajectory of change. Unlike development in the western or northeastern regions of the United States, the southeastern region has few practical, political, or geographical boundaries to the urban sprawl that is now developing.