Mount Mitchell - Environment

Environment

Mount Mitchell
Climate chart (explanation)
J F M A M J J A S O N D
7 34 17 5.4 36 19 7.9 43 25 5.3 51 33 5.9 58 42 5.6 65 49 6.7 68 53 7.4 68 52 4.9 63 47 5.1 56 38 6.4 47 29 6.9 39 21
Average max. and min. temperatures in °F
Precipitation totals in inches
Source: NOAA
Metric conversion
J F M A M J J A S O N D
178 1 -8 137 2 -7 201 6 -4 136 10 1 151 14 6 141 18 9 170 20 12 188 20 11 124 17 8 130 13 3 162 8 -2 175 4 -6
Average max. and min. temperatures in °C
Precipitation totals in mm

The mountain's summit is coated in a dense stand of Southern Appalachian spruce-fir forest, which consists primarily of two evergreen species— the red spruce and the Fraser fir. Most of the mature Fraser firs, however, were killed off by the non-native Balsam woolly adelgid in the latter half of the 20th century. The high elevations also expose plant life to high levels of pollution, including acid precipitation in the form of rain, snow, and fog. These acids damage the red spruce trees in part by releasing natural metals from the soil like aluminum, and by leaching important minerals. To what extent this pollution harms the high-altitude ecosystem is debatable.

While the mountain is still mostly lush and green in the summer, many dead Fraser fir trunks can be seen due to these serious problems. Repairing the damage is a difficult issue, as the pollutants are often carried in from long distances. Sources can be local or hundreds of miles or kilometers away, requiring cooperation from as far away as the Midwest.

Wildflowers are abundant all summer long. Young fir and spruce trees do well in the subalpine climate, and their pine cones feed the birds along with wild blueberry and blackberry shrubs.

The second highest point in eastern North America, Mount Craig at 6,647 feet (2,026 m), is roughly a mile to the north of Mount Mitchell.

Read more about this topic:  Mount Mitchell

Famous quotes containing the word environment:

    “For those parents from lower-class and minority communities ... [who] have had minimal experience in negotiating dominant, external institutions or have had negative and hostile contact with social service agencies, their initial approaches to the school are often overwhelming and difficult. Not only does the school feel like an alien environment with incomprehensible norms and structures, but the families often do not feel entitled to make demands or force disagreements.”
    —Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)

    “... several generations of slum environment will produce a slum heredity ...”
    —Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)

    “People between twenty and forty are not sympathetic. The child has the capacity to do but it can’t know. It only knows when it is no longer able to do—after forty. Between twenty and forty the will of the child to do gets stronger, more dangerous, but it has not begun to learn to know yet. Since his capacity to do is forced into channels of evil through environment and pressures, man is strong before he is moral. The world’s anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty.”
    —William Faulkner (1897–1962)