<< Back 7/17/02 WCU geologists studying rare southern Appalachian wetlands SMN The term “Southern Appalachian wetland” might sound like an oxymoron to those who associate wetlands with marshy coastal landscapes, but to the students and faculty in Western Carolina University’s geology program the term describes a rare mountain environment not yet fully catalogued in scientific literature. On a recent afternoon, Rob Young, associate professor of geology, and three Western students traveled near the Blue Ridge Parkway to continue their research efforts at one particular wetland. They brought a coring machine to gather sediment samples from 10 feet underground. Those samples will be analyzed to refine the environmental history of the wetland, and, ultimately, to help parkway officials establish a management plan to sustain it. The work is funded through a $5,000 grant from the parkway. Young said the wetland near the parkway has been called a “bog” in the past, but that it does not fit the technical definition of a bog, or any other of the current classifications of wetlands. “We are proposing to call all these wetland areas ‘Southern Appalachian wetlands’ because they have the characteristics of a bunch of wetland types and are different from anything else that’s been described in the scientific literature,” Young said. “From our perspective, this is sort of a new animal.” The parkway wetland was created naturally when water seeping out of steep slope was dammed by an erosion-resistant ridge. The wetland is located in a developed area that receives a lot of visitor use. “If you want to protect a wetland, you can’t just put a fence around it and tell people not to go there. You have to protect what makes it wet,” Young said. “Our role is to try and understand how the size of this wetland has fluctuated over time, and whether it is growing or shrinking today, and what controls that. We will advise the parkway folks as to what those controls are and how to protect the physical environment that allows the wetland to be there.” On their latest trip to the parkway wetland, Young and his students brought along their “vibra-coring” machine, a contraption the WCU geology department put together that consists of a concrete vibrating motor and aluminum irrigation pipe. The motor powers the pipe as it drives straight down into the soft muck, providing quality sediment samples all the way down to the saprolite, a layer of broken-down rock that underlies the wetland. About 20 years ago, an environmental history of the parkway wetland was developed based on sediment samples retrieved with an apparatus that churned up the sediment as it drilled down. That took the the sediment “out of context,” Young said. Those samples suggested that the parkway wetland was about 8,000 years old. Western geology students gathered their first samples from the parkway wetland, using the vibra-coring machine, about four years ago as part of a class project. Those samples indicated the wetland is just 1,800 years old, Young said. The samples taken recently will be carbon-14 dated, and will allow the researchers to confirm the wetland’s age. Although the purpose of the parkway wetlands research is to help parkway officials develop a management plan for the area, the work also provides information about Southern Appalachian wetlands in general, Young said. Western students and faculty also are involved in a much more extensive wetlands study in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where they are cataloguing wetlands that have never been recorded. The work in the Smokies is part of the All-Taxa Biodiversity Inventory, a massive project now under way in which scientists hope to document every living creature in the park. Southern Appalachian wetlands are a prime target for study because they are “islands of biodiversity in an area that is already extremely biodiverse,” Young said. Young said he feels the relatively few wetlands that exist in the Southern Appalachians are worth protecting. “People have tended to think of wetlands as festering swamps – no place you’d want to visit,” he said. “Now we understand that these areas are incredibly important, and not just from an environmental standpoint. “Wetlands are the Earth’s kidneys. They clean water before it enters streams and they trap metals and pollutants. They are economically important,” Young said. Young said he hopes to take another group of students to the parkway wetland this summer to drill for the third set of sediment samples. He expects to submit a report to parkway officials next fall.