Mount Mitchell in North Carolina is the highest mountain east of the Mississippi River and it is home to diverse species and forests full of spruce and fir trees. In the 1980s scientists began to study the effects of air pollution and acid precipitation on the ecosystems of Mount Mitchell. After years of research and analysis, scientists concluded in 1988 that industrial pollution traveling from the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys were creating lingering air pollutants that contributed to the formation of acid rainfall. Sulfur- and nitrogen-based air pollution and acid precipitation as well as the dissolution of important nutrients from the soil are still causing the spruce and fir trees of the forest to die, while brush and other forms of wildlife are struggling to survive in the area. Simultaneously the potent combination of low level ozone and acidic moisture is damaging other forests in the Appalachian Mountain Range. In order to correct the problem, and to prevent it from getting worse in the future, many scientists suggest that politicians in North Carolina lobby for more support to find economical and technologically feasible solutions to the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Contributed by Patrick R. Kelly
Course: Global Environmental History
Instructor: Andrew Stuhl, Ph.D.
Bucknell University, Lewisburg, US
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- Bruck, R. I., and W. P. Robarge. "Change in Forest Structure in the Boreal Montane Ecosystem of Mount Mitchell, North Carolina." European Journal of Forest Pathology 18 no. 6 (1988): 357–66.