Bob Brussack's Profile

the longleaf pine–grassland forest may well be the most diverse North
American ecosystem north of the tropics, containing rare plants and animals not found anywhere else

The longleaf-grassland forest that we know today is a natural system of Holocene origin. In other words, it has most likely
never existed absent a human presence. Indeed, some researchers estimate that this ecosystem is no more than 5,000 years old.

lumber

naval stores industry,

forage

large-scale timber industry

exclusion of fire

With the decline of pulp
and paper in the last decade, there has been an effort to restore some of these lands to longleaf, but a lack of incentive
and, most importantly, knowledge about longleaf ecology has proven a difficult gap to bridge.

Janisse Ray, in her elegant book of essays Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, exposed many Georgians to the beauty and importance of the longleaf-grassland ecosystem.

During the Late Devonian, a shallow sea flooded the northwestern part of Georgia and much of central North America.

The third and final Paleozoic mountain-building event, beginning in the Late Mississippian and continuing throughout the Pennsylvanian
and Permian periods, affected the Appalachian region. This event, the Alleghanian orogeny, was caused by the collision of
Africa (part of the continent of Gondwana) with North America, resulting in the complete closure of the Iapetus Ocean and
the formation of the supercontinent Pangaea.

During the Pennsylvanian period (318 to 299 million years ago), most of Georgia was located within the core of a large Appalachian
mountain range, which was 4 to 7 kilometers high and rivaled the Himalayan mountain system (in present-day Asia) in size.
There was no ocean to the east; rather, the continent of Africa was welded to North America. The sea lay far to the west,
in central North America. Along the western side of the Appalachian mountain range lay a vast swampy lowland covered by lush
tropical forests that were inhabited by fern-like plants, huge insects, and amphibians.