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How fire, people and history shaped the South's iconic longleaf pine forests
- January 27, 2026 at 6:27 PM
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For thousands of years, one tree species defined the cultural and ecological identity of what is now the American South: the longleaf pine. The forest once stretched across 92 million acres from Virginia to Texas, but about 5% of that original forest remains. It was one of North America's richest ecosystems, and it nearly disappeared.
Originally published at Phys.org