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...changed when plane crossed the Tennessee River to the Cumberland Plateau. The river itself hosts giant silt plumes, which Camuto traces to the river's uneasy neighbors--giant corporate-owned loblolly pine plantations totally lacking in the biodiversity that enriches the Great Smoky Mountains.
"During the past 20 years, the native oak-hickory forests of the Cumberland Plateau have been turned into loblolly plantations at an alarming rate," Camuto says. A clear consequence of the plantations is the proliferation of enormous clear-cuts on hillsides and flat land alike, encouraging erosion and damage to the watershed. A devastating invasion of pine bark beetles--feasting on their favorite food, undeterred by inedible hardwoods--cropped up in 1999 and has encouraged hasty salvage clear-cutting, making the problem that much worse.
John Evans, a professor of biology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, says that the natural hardwood forest is "a vibrant flora and fauna community," and that if replaced with a monoculture "the crop fails in the first rotation, because the beetles go from being a native disturbance to a native epidemic. It only gets worse when you increase their food supply. One wonders what kind...
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