The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern to northeastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They once reached elevations similar to those of the Alps and the Rocky Mountains before experiencing natural erosion. The Appalachian chain is a barrier to east–west travel, as it forms a series of alternating ridgelines and valleys oriented in opposition to most highways and railroads running east–west.
The Great Smoky Mountains are a mountain range rising along the Tennessee–North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. They are a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains, and form part of the Blue Ridge Physiographic Province. The range is sometimes called the Smoky Mountains and the name is commonly shortened to the Smokies. The Great Smokies are best known as the home of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which protects most of the range. The park was established in 1934, and, with over 11 million visits per year, it is the most visited national park in the United States.
Picea rubens, commonly known as red spruce, is a species of spruce native to eastern North America, ranging from eastern Quebec and Nova Scotia, west to the Adirondack Mountains and south through New England along the Appalachians to western North Carolina. This species is also known as yellow spruce, West Virginia spruce, eastern spruce, and he-balsam. Red spruce is the provincial tree of Nova Scotia.
Microhexura is a genus of tiny North American spiders that was first described by C. R. Crosby & S. C. Bishop in 1925. It is the only genus in the family Microhexuridae. As of July 2020, it contained only two species, both found in the United States: M. idahoana and M. montivaga. M. montivaga occurs in the higher peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. M. idahoana occurs farther west, in the Cascades, the Blue Mountains, and the northern Rocky Mountains.
The Fraser fir is an endangered species of fir native to the Appalachian Mountains of the Southeastern United States.
The Black Mountains are a mountain range in western North Carolina, in the southeastern United States. They are part of the Blue Ridge Province of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The Black Mountains are the highest mountains in the Eastern United States. The range takes its name from the dark appearance of the red spruce and Fraser fir trees that form a spruce-fir forest on the upper slopes which contrasts with the brown or lighter green appearance of the deciduous trees at lower elevations. The Eastern Continental Divide, which runs along the eastern Blue Ridge crest, intersects the southern tip of the Black Mountain range.
The Appalachian mixed mesophytic forests is an ecoregion of the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome, as defined by the World Wildlife Fund. It consists of mesophytic plants west of the Appalachian Mountains in the Southeastern United States.
The Appalachian–Blue Ridge forests are an ecoregion in the Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests Biome, in the Eastern United States. The ecoregion is located in the central and southern Appalachian Mountains, including the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians and the Blue Ridge Mountains. It covers an area of about 61,500 square miles (159,000 km2) in: northeast Alabama and Georgia, northwest South Carolina, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and central West Virginia and Pennsylvania; and small extensions into Kentucky, New Jersey, and New York.
The Cheat Mountain salamander is a species of small woodland salamander found only on Cheat Mountain, and a few nearby mountains, in the eastern highlands of West Virginia. It and the West Virginia spring salamander are the only vertebrate species with geographic ranges restricted to that state.
The red-cheeked salamander, also known as the Jordan's salamander, Jordan's redcheek salamander, or Appalachian woodland salamander, is a species of salamander in the family Plethodontidae. It is endemic to the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States.
The northern gray-cheeked salamander is a species of salamander in the family Plethodontidae and endemic to the Blue Ridge Mountains and Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. It is closely related to the Red-cheeked salamander and the Red-legged salamander. Its natural habitat is temperate forests. It is found under moss, rocks, logs, and bark in cool, moist forests above 2500 feet. Especially found in spruce-fir forests. The Gray-cheeked Salamander commonly eats millipedes, earthworms, crane flies, spiders, and centipedes and less commonly eats ants, mites, and springtails. They eat spiders, moths, flies, beetles, bees, and snails. The male and female perform a courtship, where the male nudges the female with his snout, does a foot dance, then circles under the female and the two then walk together. Like other salamanders, they do not migrate or aggregate during breeding season. It is threatened by habitat loss.
Fir and spruce forests are greatly affected by slight fluctuations in climate. Temperature is the primary determinate for spatial patterns of fir and spruce. The two dominant trees in this type of forest are Picea engelmannii and Abies lasiocarpa. Although thick-barked trees, such as the Pinus resinosa, frequently survive fire, the thin bark of spruce make them more vulnerable. Trees such as the Douglas fir withstand much of the fire due to the thicker bark they have. The scale of the burn mosaic during a fire, relative to species niche requirements and mobility, can have major impacts on flora and fauna dynamics.
Hylocomium splendens, commonly known as glittering woodmoss, splendid feather moss, stairstep moss, and mountain fern moss, is a perennial clonal moss with a widespread distribution in Northern Hemisphere boreal forests. It is commonly found in Europe, Russia, Alaska and Canada, where it is often the most abundant moss species. It also grows in the Arctic tundra and further south at higher elevations in, for example, northern California, western Sichuan, East Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the West Indies. In Scotland it is a characteristic species of the Caledonian Forest. Under the UK's national vegetation classification system, pinewood community W18 is named as "Pinus sylvestris-Hylocomium splendens woodland", indicating its significance in this ecosystem.
Richland Balsam is a mountain in the Great Balsam Mountains in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Rising to an elevation of 6,410 feet (1,950 m), it is the highest mountain in the Great Balsam range, is among the 20 highest summits in the Appalachian range, and is the ninth highest peak in the East of the United States. The Blue Ridge Parkway reaches an elevation of 6,053 feet (1,845 m)— the parkway's highest point— as it passes over Richland Balsam's southwestern slope. The Jackson County-Haywood County line crosses the mountain's summit.
The southern Appalachian spruce–fir forest is an ecoregion of the temperate coniferous forests biome, a type of montane coniferous forest that grows in the highest elevations in the southern Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States.
The eastern forest–boreal transition is a temperate broadleaf and mixed forests ecoregion of North America, mostly in eastern Canada. It is a transitional zone or region between the predominantly coniferous Boreal Forest and the mostly deciduous broadleaf forest region further south.
The ecology of the Rocky Mountains is diverse due to the effects of a variety of environmental factors. The Rocky Mountains are the major mountain range in western North America, running from the far north of British Columbia in Canada to New Mexico in the southwestern United States, climbing from the Great Plains at or below 1,800 feet (550 m) to peaks of over 14,000 feet (4,300 m). Temperature and rainfall varies greatly also and thus the Rockies are home to a mixture of habitats including the alpine, subalpine and boreal habitats of the Northern Rocky Mountains in British Columbia and Alberta, the coniferous forests of Montana and Idaho, the wetlands and prairie where the Rockies meet the plains, a different mix of conifers on the Yellowstone Plateau in Wyoming and in the high Rockies of Colorado and New Mexico, and finally the alpine tundra of the highest elevations.
Balsam woolly adelgids are small wingless insects that infest and kill firs, especially balsam fir and Fraser fir. They are an invasive species from Europe introduced to the United States around 1900.
The Appalachian temperate rainforest is located in the southern Appalachian Mountains of the eastern U.S. About 351,500 square kilometers of forest land is spread across eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina, the northwestern portion of South Carolina, northern Georgia, northern Alabama, and eastern Tennessee. The annual precipitation is more than 60 inches (1,500 mm). The Southern Appalachian spruce–fir forest is a temperate rainforest located in the higher elevations in southwestern Virginia, western North Carolina and East Tennessee. Fir is dominant at higher elevation, spruce at middle elevation, and mixed forests at low elevation.
