All About the Southern Appalachian CESU

The Southern Appalachian Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (SA-CESU) is a group of federal and private sector partners that have joined together with a mutual mission to promote and provide effective and efficient research, technical assistance and education to federal land management, environmental and research agencies in the Southern Appalachian Mountain Region. The SA-CESU was one of the original four CESU established in 1999, at the start up of the national CESU network.

What kind of projects does the SA-CESU do?

The SA-CESU develops interdisciplinary projects that address the cultural, social and natural resource issues of the Southern Appalachian region. Some example project themes include:

• Archeological surveys
• Vegetative inventories
• Visitor use and impact studies
• Wildlife and wildlife habitat studies
• Development of ecological models
• Oral history interviews

Where is the Southern Appalachian CESU?

Its at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains, of course!

But don’t let boundary lines fool you. The Southern Appalachian CESU doesn’t really have boundaries. Its more of an area of affinity than anything else. An area where universities, institutes, NGOs, state agencies and federal units would commonly associate with each other in a common geographical area.

In the map below, the red line is the boundary designated by the National CESU Council. It represents an approximate biogeographic area. The blue line represents the area affinity that the Southern Appalachian CESU commonly operates in.