Southwest Virginia's Big Laurel Creek - Whitetop Laurel Creek Watershed Study

At the end of the Fall 2025 semester, this is my final post for Virginia Tech’s NR 5264 Watershed Stewardship course. I think that my Big Laurel Creek – Whitetop Laurel Creek watershed blog stands on its own as "the final product" for this course, but there are several future plans and goals that I hope to pursue with additional blog posts in the future. 1.  I hope to add several more future blog posts that I mentioned in previous blog posts.   a.     One planned post is to create a catalog of photographs of the Big Laurel-Whitetop Laurel Creek watershed at various locations within the watershed.   I took many photographs earlier in the semester but never found the time to create this post during the semester.            Several of these photographs are:   Headwaters of Big Laurel Creek, at 36.689271, -81.543411   Confluence of Little Laurel Creek (left) and Big Laurel Creek (far ground)  which becomes ...

The goal of this blog (and Virginia Tech’s NR 5264 Watershed Stewardship course) was to help me build, develop and document a new understanding and foundation of watershed advocacy skills.  These are the skills and orientation that I need to be able to quickly develop a stewardship or advocacy strategy if presented with a conservation or resource management challenge.   In other words, a foundation or building block for many other projects that are relevant to a watershed, water, and natural resources management professional.   The additional goal of this blog is to share what I have learned with you.   With this in mind, and in addition to the products already documented with earlier blog posts for the Big Laurel Creek - Whitetop Laurel Creek watershed, the additional resources listed below can hopefully be useful to you in the development an advocacy plan for a watershed that is important to you as a   citizen, student, teacher, naturalist or natural res...

This blog post provides a comprehensive description of the  tree and woody plant identification / taxonomy  of the species identified in the earlier blog post “ Dendrology of the Laurel Creek - Whitetop Laurel Creek Watershed, Part 1, September 23, 2025 As previously stated, “Dendrology (tree and wedoody plant identification and taxonomy) is an important part of planning or protecting riparian zones, erosion control, and floodplain management.   The  Big Laurel Creek - Whitetop Laurel Creek Watershed consists of many varied ecosystems and plant communities, including high elevation forests, alluvial forests, and roadsides and fields in the developed floodplains.  ...   Below is a list of important tree and plant species in the watershed: Frasier Fir ( Abies fraseri ) Red Spruce ( Picea rubens ) Yellow Birch ( Betula alleghaniensis ) Northern Red Oak ( Quercus rubra ) White Oak ( Quercus alba ) Chestnut Oak ( Quercus montana ) Eastern Whi...