Stewarding a Carolina Bay on Your Property
How to recognize a Carolina Bay
Looking at aerial imagery can provide the best clues about where Carolina Bays are located. Look for an oval depression, with a southeast-northwest orientation, and a rim that is highest on the southeast side. Historical land use like ditching, draining, and conversion to agriculture can sometimes make the characteristic oval shape harder to see. Historically, some bays held water year-round, while others only held water during the wettest times of year.
Why it Matters
Carolina Bays can store floodwater, provide valuable habitat for wildlife and rare species, filter water, decrease wildfire risk through controlled burning, and offer recreation opportunities.
By stewarding your bays, you can help protect downstream communities from flooding, improve local water quality, create opportunities for hunting, fishing, and foraging, and protect the many animals and plants that depend on these wetlands.
What Actions Help
What did your Carolina bay look like hundreds of years ago? How have recent human activities changed the ability of your bay to hold floodwater or provide homes to wildlife and diverse plant communities? Every bay is unique, and thinking about the answers to these questions can help you understand what your bay needs.
Bays vary widely by their size, soil type, hydrology, plant and animal communities, and disturbance. There is no one-size-fits-all method to restoring or managing a bay. However, the following guidelines may help you determine what your bay needs. For best results, consult with a professional forester or natural resource manager who can help design a management plan suitable for your bay.
Hydrology
Keep in mind that the hydrology of bays is highly variable and most will not hold water year-round, but even temporary flooding can help keep the vegetation community healthy, wildlife happy, and decrease flood risk for nearby areas.
Many bays have been ditched, drained, or filled. Restoring the hydrology of your bay is essential for natural functioning of the bay. Ditches can be filled or plugged, or filling can be removed. Depending on the scale of the project, consultation with an engineer may be advisable to assess the best course of action and determine how the restoration of your bay may impact surrounding areas.
Controlled Burning
Many Carolina bays are naturally adapted to regular fire. Bays with a target meadow or forested savannah plan community need fire to knock back woody vegetation, allowing a rich array of herbaceous species to thrive when the bay dries down.
If the bay has not seen fire in many years, preparation for controlled burning will involve construction of fire lines (ideally in the uplands, not the bay itself) and may also involve some mechanical removal of duff, to ensure that the fire can pass safely and permit regrowth of herbaceous species.
Check this map to see if there is a Prescribed Burn Association in your area that can help provide the training, support, and equipment needed to get fire on your land.
Vegetation Management
Understanding the ideal conditions for your Carolina bay is essential for vegetation management. Consultation with an ecologist or other natural resource manager is recommended to assess what your target natural plant community looks like.
In many bays that have experienced hydrological alteration and/or fire suppression, aggressive plant species have invaded and crowded out the natural plant communities. Sometimes there may be invasive species, like Chinese Privet and Japanese Stiltgrass, while other times the aggressors are native plants like Sweetgum or Loblolly Pine that would not grow in the bay under natural cycles of flooding and fire. As these aggressive species move in, they suck up more water and further alter the hydrology of the bay. They also crowd out and shade out the species that do belong in the bay, like rare wildflowers or slow-growing young cypress trees.
Once you understand the desired conditions and plant community of your bay, you can tackle the undesirable species. Depending on the target species, the ideal management strategy may involve fire, mechanical removal, and/or herbicide application. For best results, combining fire with another method is often recommended.
Who to Contact
Under construction, come back soon!
In the meantime: look for your local Prescribed Burn Association, who can help you learn about conducting controlled burns on your land, and your local Natural Resources Conservation Service, who can help you learn about opportunities to fund protection, restoration, or management of your Carolina Bay.