- CHAPTER 7 - 



A CASE STUDY: ATLANTIC WHITE CEDAR WETLANDS 



IN DARE COUNTY, NORTH CAROLINA 



by 



Julie H. Moore and Aimlee D. Laderman 



7.1 OVERVIEW 



Mainland Dare County, in northeastern 

 North Carolina, forms a northerly projection at the 

 northeastern end of the low-lying Albemarle-Pamlico 

 Peninsula (Figure 38). It is bounded on the north by 

 Albemarle Sound, on the east by Croatan and Pam- 

 lico Sounds, and on the west by the Alligator River, 

 which is used as a section of the Intracoastal Water- 

 way. The peninsula is separated from the Atlantic 

 Ocean by a string of narrow barrier islands. 



Except as otherwise noted, data and 

 analyses are previously unpublished field obser- 

 vations gathered by J.H. Moore while working on the 

 USFWS wetlands mapping project and serving as su- 

 pervisor of the Natural Heritage Program Inventory of 

 Dare and Tyrrell Counties (Lynch and Peacock 1982; 

 Peacock and Lynch 1982). 



7.1.1 Historical Perspective 



A century ago, Atlantic white cedar was a 

 common tree of North Carolina's coastal wetlands 

 extending inland to the Fall Line. W.W. Ashe (1 894a), 

 in an inventory of the State's forest resources, es- 

 timated that white cedar, one of the most valuable 

 trees growing in the coastal plain, covered ca. 80,940 

 ha in North Carolina. By that time, the huge supplies 

 of white cedar in the Dismal Swamp had been har- 

 vested; the most extensive white cedar forests 

 (16,000 ha) were located in North Carolina's Dare, 

 Tyrrell, and Hyde counties. Today, only fragments of 

 the once expansive cedar forests of this area remain. 

 The most extensive white cedar forests extant in 



North Carolina, and probably in the world, are lo- 

 cated in the Dare County peatlands east of the Al- 

 ligator River, in the Alligator River National Wildlife 

 Refuge. 



White cedar in this region grows in two types 

 of associations: in distinctive, pure, seemingly even- 

 aged dense stands, and in mixed forests with lowland 

 conifers (cypress, pond and loblolly pine) and hard- 

 woods (black gum [Nyssa sylvatica var biflora], red 

 maple, sweet bay). Black gum in this chapter refers 

 only to the variety biflora, also known locally as 

 swamp black gum. Few old-growth pure stands 

 remain because these forests are the most profitable 

 to harvest. The oldest and largest white cedars in the 

 peatlands occur as scattered individuals about 27 m 

 tall with 0.6 m dbh within the mixed swamp forest 

 association. The habitats supporting these two 

 cedar communities and the species associated with 

 them are essentially the same. Fire and timbering 

 histories appear to be the major factors in de- 

 termining whether a dense, essentially pure white 

 cedar stand develops or a mixed swamp with varying 

 densities of cedar is established (Peacock and Lynch 

 1982). 



7.1.2 Timbering History 



The history of white cedar harvest in North 

 Carolina is described in detail by Frost (1 987 and un- 

 publ.). McMullan (1 982) provides a comprehensive 

 account of harvest in the Alligator River Region. 

 Major white cedar products in this region were 

 shingles, buckets, cooperage materials, and 

 telegraph and electric light poles (Ashe 1 894a; Frost 



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