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Big Prairie and the Lost Grasslands of Northern Alabama and The Glades & Barrens, Woodlands, and Forests of the Cumberland Escarpment
Langellier, Robert
Langellier, Robert
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Northern Alabama and southern Tennessee do not strike many people as a place of grasslands. This region, however, known as the Eastern Highland Rim, was pivotal in the early years of the American cotton empire. Working with the Southeastern Grasslands Institute, I hypothesized that the plantation elite used the presence of grasslands to prioritize settlement of the Tennessee River Valley. Using witness tree analysis and archival research, I developed a map of the presettlement landscape of Madison and Limestone Counties, Alabama, showing a shifting matrix of prairie, savanna, woodland, and forest. I then used early land grant data to compare settlement patterns with those historic habitat types. The overlap between cotton settlement and grasslands has major implications for the near-total loss of north Alabama grasslands, both physically and in cultural memory.
In part two, I move forward in time to the adjacent ecoregion of the Cumberland Escarpment, where small remnant barrens and glades still exist on the steep slope that joins the Eastern Highland Rim ecoregion with the Cumberland Plateau. In part because these barrens and glades are locked into a byzantine network of private hunting properties, they have never been systematically botanized nor described as a unique system. I accessed and systematically botanized these grasslands, along with the woodlands and forests surrounding them, to help characterize them. In total, 36 rare taxa were identified, including one tentative state record.
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BIGPRA~1.PDF
Adobe PDF, 11.35 MB