Talk:Appalachian balds

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A fact from Appalachian balds appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 23 August 2007.

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[edit] "Forestry"

I'm working on cleaning up the Forestry category, and Forestry seems to be a very unlikely category for these. Perhaps it could be made clearer in the article how the balds relate to Forestry. It also seems like it would be helpful if they were added to some state and regional cats. If they are not "regions" of individual states (that was a good faith effort on my part), how about at least placing it Category:Southern United States. Regional and state-level categories help people find topics of interest to those states and regions. If you don't like any of those suggestions, this should at least be placed in the subcat Category:Forestry in the United States. Thanks. Katr67 (talk) 15:39, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

P.S. Re: The edit summary to the reversion of my edits. Lots of things are part of greater forests, but not all are directly related to the art and science of forestry. How about Category:Forests of Tennessee, Category:Forests of North Carolina, Category:Natural history of Tennessee, etc? I can help create the redlinked ones if you want. Katr67 (talk) 15:44, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Balds occur in places where heavy tree growth would be expected. When the federal government took control of large segments of the southern Appalachian highlands in the early 1900s and put an end to cattle grazing on the balds, the forest slowly started to reclaim them. Because the balds were unique ecosystems, the NPS and USFS decided to preserve and maintain several balds in the GSMNP and the Roan Highlands.(Encyclopedia of Appalachia, p. 48). If I've misunderstood the category criteria or if the topic is too region-specific, I'll try to find another one. Bms4880 (talk) 18:18, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Re: the forestry connection: Ah, that makes sense. Perhaps you could clarify that in the article. So should there be a Category:Appalachian Mountains? the closest thing is Category:Appalachian culture. Is that apt for this subject? Thanks for understanding. Katr67 (talk) 20:28, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

It's no problem. Again, I don't know how much forestry is involved in maintaining a bald, so I don't know if it's too specific for the forestry category. I created a category for the Appalachian Mountains. Bms4880 (talk) 21:31, 28 May 2008 (UTC)