Section 05

The Balds

Grassy summits sit below the treeline on ground where climate alone should produce closed forest. Fire, grazing, indigenous management and frost disturbance have all been proposed, and the evidence supports several of them without settling on one. The balds remain one of the genuinely unsolved problems in Southern Appalachian ecology.

• 05.1Grass where forest should beTreeless summits below the treeline, in the Roan Highlands and elsewhere, that nobody has fully explained.
• 05.2Competing explanationsFire, grazing, ice damage, indigenous management — the evidence supports several and settles none.