Vegetation at Moores Creek National Battlefield: A 2022 Baseline

Based on the National Park Service Southeast Coast Network's 2022 data summary for terrestrial vegetation monitoring.

Vegetation plots established in June 2022. NPS graphic/Mallorie Davis.

Why monitor plants

The Southeast Coast Network tracks plant communities in its parks because their diversity supports ecological services and wildlife, and because trends and stresses in vegetation reveal the health of park ecosystems and guide management. It uses a peer-reviewed protocol, like other eastern NPS Inventory and Monitoring networks and modeled on the Carolina Vegetation Survey, recording in permanent, randomly placed plots: plant richness and abundance, native and non-native; the size, density and health of woody plants; forest-floor fuels; disturbances such as pests and disease; and physical conditions such as landform, soil nutrients and canopy.

The park

Moores Creek National Battlefield, in Pender County, North Carolina, northwest of Wilmington, is named for Moores Creek, a tidal tributary of the Black River in the Cape Fear watershed. It was founded in 1926 to commemorate a pivotal Revolutionary War battle at Moores Creek Bridge, where American Patriots won a significant victory over Scottish Loyalists.

Its vegetation includes floodplain along the creek, pine-dominated uplands at the south and east ends, and a wet meadow or "savanna" west of the visitor center, long a focus of management because of the many rare plants historically found there. The protocol was used here for the first time in June 2022, with eleven plots across these three habitats setting a baseline.

The park lies in the Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain (Carolina Flatwoods) ecoregion: low relief, broad uplands and poorly drained soils. Pine flatwoods and savannas were once common, but drainage and loblolly pine timber production changed the region's natural vegetation, and today's patterns reflect that history as well as soils, water and disturbances such as fire and storms.

What grows there

• 229 plant species across the plots, 30 of them never recorded in earlier surveys.
• Two species new to the park, Oriental lady's thumb and cogongrass, are listed as invasive by the North Carolina Invasive Plant Council.
• Rare species turned up in every wetland habitat surveyed, including a state species of special concern, small-leaved meadowrue.
• Native richness per plot ranged from 34 to 86 species, highest in nonalluvial wetland plots. Herbaceous plants dominated the wetlands and trees the uplands.
• Non-native species were frequent in the alluvial and nonalluvial wetlands but scarce everywhere. Four Rank 1 invasive plants appeared in alluvial wetland plots: mud-annie, sericea lespedeza, Chinese privet and Chinese wisteria.

Average species richness (± standard deviation) by growth form and habitat. NPS graphic/SECN staff.

Mean occurrence of native and non-native species by habitat. NPS graphic/SECN staff.

Fire and longleaf pine

Past farming, grazing, timber management, ditching for water control and fire suppression disrupted the water patterns and natural fires of the park's nonalluvial wetland and open upland woodland. Bringing back frequent fire over recent decades has improved conditions. Restoring longleaf pine, historically the dominant canopy tree of these habitats, may require planting as well as continued prescribed fire. The plots were scheduled to be resampled in spring or summer 2026.

Sources

• National Park Service, Southeast Coast Network, "Terrestrial Vegetation Monitoring 2022 Data Summary for Moores Creek National Battlefield": https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/secn-vegetation-monitoring-mocr-2022.htm
• Full report: https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/Reference/Profile/2306499
• The summary gives the park's distance from Wilmington as "12.4 kilometers (20 miles)" and its size as "40 hectares (88 acres)"; each pair of figures disagrees, so this page gives neither. It spells Chinese wisteria's scientific name Wisteria sinense; the name is Wisteria sinensis.