Early Red Spruce Restoration Research By The Appalachian Forest Experiment Station, 1922-1954

This photograph (Fig. 1), taken in June of 1923 by E.S. Ship, depicts a red spruce (Picea rubens) stand with advanced reproduction near the summit of Mount Mitchell in the Pisgah National Forest of North Carolina. According to Hopkins (1899), the original extent of red spruce encompassed as much as 1,500,000 ac in the southern Appalachians; by 1895, this had been reduced to 225,000 ac. To help restore this ecosystem, the Appalachian Forest Experiment Station (AFES) was established in 1921. Headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina, the AFES covered an area of 120 million ac in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina and parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. Earl Frothingham was the first AFES director, and one of his first hires was Clarence Korstian. Red spruce studies brought Korstian to cutover lands owned by the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company in West Virginia and Champion Paper land in North Carolina (Maunder 1969).