11a. Prose Description of Natural Area 



The Van Swamp natural area is a 2450-acre tract of swamp 

 forest and pond pine pocosin wetlands located in southwestern 

 Washington County. The natural area contains the last remnant 

 stands of natural vegetation within the entire Van Swamp com- 

 plex of Washington County. The original swamp system extended 

 from near Plymouth in Washington County southwest to the com- 

 munity of Pinetown, Beaufort County, a distance of roughly 

 fifteen miles. Deforestation and conversion of the original 

 swamp forest vegetation to managed pine plantations has re- 

 duced the swamp to its present dimensions in extreme south- 

 western Washington and adjacent Beaufort Counties (See Fig. 

 1) • 



Originally, Van Swamp occupied an area of about 13,440 

 acres in southwestern Washington County from Plymouth south 

 to the Beaufort County line, a distance of about nine miles. 

 Roughly rectangular in size and averaging 3-4 miles wide, 

 Van Swamp was a sizeable wetland system with no well-defined 

 drainage outlets. It was essentially a landlocked upland 

 bog: a non-alluvial, palustrine wetland system. Today, a 

 network of drainage ditches have tamed the swamp and most 

 of the original swamp and pocosin vegetation has been cleared 

 and converted to intensively managed pine plantations. What 

 remains of the natural ecosystem is a small chunk in the south- 

 western corner of the county. Geologically, Van Swamp is a 

 relatively flat basin, bordered on its eastern and western mar- 

 gins by two parallel, eastward-facing scarps. The older scarp 

 along the western margin is known as the Pinetown scarp or 

 Pinetown shoreline. The younger, topographically lower scarp 

 on the east is called the Union Chapel shoreline (See Fig 2) . 

 Both of these scarps probably represent old beach ridges 

 formed during periods of high sea levels during the Pleistocene 

 Epoch (Mixon and Pilkey 197G) . The area between the scarp, 

 i.e., Van Swamp, consists of ancient beach ridges and back- 

 dune flats. The elevation of the Van Swamp flat is generally 

 between 30-40 feet msl. The tow of the Union Chapel Scarp 

 is consistently 17-21 msl, whereas the toe of the Pinetown 

 Scarp is about 38-40 feet msl (Mixon and Pilkey 1976) . These 

 two scarps are the dominant landforms in the area and are 

 clearly visible on aerial photographs taken by the Apollo 

 9 spacecraft in 1969 (Mixon and Pilkey, 1976) . The pro- 

 nounced ridges along the crest of the scarps have effectively 

 blocked the drainage of Van Swamp and as a result initiated the 

 formation of the wetland system. 



In order to understand the ecological systems within the 

 natural area, it is important that an overall picture of the 

 entire Van Swamp area be outlined. 



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