Home » Regions » North America » Eastern Temperate Forests » Southeastern USA Plains » Southeastern Plains » Coastal Plain Red Uplands

Coastal Plain Red Uplands

↑About the Coastal Plain Red Uplands

The Coastal Plain Red Uplands is a region of the Southeastern Plains located entirely within Georgia, extending southwest-to-northeast but having irregular borders, named for its reddish soils.

This region is underlain by a mixture of sand, clay, and limestone, which are heavily weathered into loamy sand, sandy loam, and sandy clay, and clayey sand. On average soils here tend to be fine-textured, reddish (due to being iron-rich) and leached of more soluble nutrients like calcium, and thus acidic. Soil texture varies somewhat, but is consistently both well-drained and finer-textured than the coarse sands found farther inland.

This region was originally covered in southern mixed forest on the moister sites and oak-hickory-pine forest on the drier sites.

Presently this region is heavily utilized for agriculture, including both cropland and pastureland; the region produces peanuts, soybeans, wheat, cotton, corn, and rye. Some wild forest remainds, mostly southern mixed forest on the more steeply-sloped land. This region is mostly rural. The larger towns include Perry, Americus, and Sandersville.

This region is bordered inland, to the northwest, by the Sand Hills, a drier, more fire-prone region, except in the far southwest where it is bordered to the northwest by the Southern Hilly Gulf Coastal Plain. Most of this region is bordered to the southeast by the Atlantic Southern Loam Plains, except in the southwest where it is bordered to the southeast by the Dougherty Plain, an area with limestone-derived soils. This region is also interrupted in three places by the Southeastern Floodplains and Low Terraces, along the floodplains of the Flint, Ocmulgee, and Oconee rivers.

Plant Lists & In-Region Search

↑References

1. Griffith, G.E., Omernik, J.M., Comstock, J.A., Lawrence, S., Martin, G., Goddard, A., Hulcher, V.J., and Foster, T. "Ecoregions of Alabama and Georgia (color poster with map, descriptive text, summary tables, and photographs)", U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA (2001) Web.