The drainage areas of the Apalachicola National Forest are parts of the Sopchoppy, Ochlockonee, New River, and Apalachicola watershed basins. In presettlement times this region was dominated by the same extensive open longleaf pine (Pinus palustris)/wiregrass (Aristida stricta/beyricheana) ecosystem that extended from southern Virginia to eastern Texas in the coastal plain of the United States.  The Ochlockonee River divides the forest into two districts, the western Apalachicola Ranger District and the eastern Wakulla Ranger District.  Its border on the west is the Apalachicola River.  The old-growth forest was cut between 1880 and the early 1900s, after similar exploitation had led to harvest of the original forests in New England and around the Great Lakes. Many of the remaining pine trees in the southeast were tapped for gum, which was distilled for turpentine and rosin.  In the mid-1930s the USDA Forest Service bought large areas of these damaged cutover lands. One such area became the Apalachicola National Forest in 1936.

For management purposes, the districts are divided into more than 200 compartments that average about 1000 acres (400 hectares) each (Fig. 1). Numbered stands are units within compartments that have similar vegetation and management history.  In the uplands, some stands have an open structure with longleaf pine trees of varying sizes and ages, minimal understory, and a thick carpet of the wiregrass, other bunch grasses, and herbs, like the forest that characterized the original longleaf pine/bunchgrass ecosystem (Fig. 2).  In such stands there are patches of natural pine regeneration.  Most mature longleaf pine stands look more even-aged and have a low understory of shrubs.  Those stands did regenerate naturally and are now more than 80 years old.  Many other stands are slash pine plantations planted after 1960, often with trees in bedded rows.  Their understories vary with how much the soil was disturbed when the trees were planted and how frequently they have been burned.  None of them have the dense clumpy wiregrass that characterizes the groundcover in frequently burned stands that have never been site prepared.

The Florida Natural Areas Inventory views the natural longleaf/bunchgrass ecosystem in Florida as a combination of two upland communities: mesic flatwoods and sandhills, both of which were present when the original forest was cut in the early 20th century (Knight et al. 2011).  The understory in the mesic flatwoods has a component of saw palmetto, gallberry and other woody shrubs, which must be kept in check with frequent prescribed fire. In the sandhills, the longleaf forest develops an understory midstory of turkey oak and bluejack oak and ground cover dominated by wiregrass. The sandhills also require frequent prescribed fire, but its component of woody shrubs is less persistent.  The best example of sandhills in the ANF is the Munson Sandhills just south of Tallahassee.  Slash pines naturally occur in the ANF in wetter areas of the mesic flatwoods and in upland areas mixed with longleaf, or where longleaf did not regenerate after the original cut. But most of the slash pines in the ANF are in plantations.

The lowlands of the ANF have bay, cypress, tupelo, and titi swamps, and seepage bogs, where black gum, red maple, and wax myrtle are common.  The Apalachicola River drains the western edge of the forest. Other drainage areas are parts of the Sopchoppy, Ochlockonee, and New River watersheds. Another important lowland component is the large open savannas in the southern and western sections of Apalachicola Ranger District. They have longleaf pine on their sandy ridges and large concave relatively wet treeless areas with a highly diverse herbaceous groundcover. It is the uplands and the savannas that are suitable for timber production, a total of 516,200 acres (USFA 1999, p. B-3) and presumably burnable.

The original old-growth longleaf pine/bunchgrass ecosystem in the southern United States was cut between 1880 and the early 1900s.  Many of the remaining longleaf pines were tapped for gum, which was distilled for turpentine and rosin.  In the 1930s, the USDA bought large areas of these damaged cutover lands.  The mission of the Forest Service was to regrow the cutover forest and to assure that its products would be used to serve the public.  In the early period, fire was excluded and large areas did not regenerate well into longleaf forest.  Those areas that did regenerate naturally are today’s mostly-even-aged mature second-growth longleaf stands. They include a few scattered relic trees that were spared in the original harvest, some of which are ~150 years old.  Prescribed burning started in the 1940s then more even-aged longleaf stands developed on soil that had not been plowed.

During and after World War II the national demand for timber increased nationwide and the availability of heavy equipment allowed massive increases in timber harvest in national forests.  At that time the technology for the artificial regeneration of longleaf pine was not available, so clearcut areas were site prepared and replanted with slash pine.  Today, about  58,000 acres?, one fourth of the approximately 230,000 managed acres that are estimated to have been originally longleaf are occupied by planted slash pine.  In the last 20 years, the problems of how to establish both longleaf seedlings and wiregrass has been solved.  Today there are many ? acres of longleaf plantations and special places where wiregrass has been planted.  The major challenge now is how to restore  the more than 200,000 acres of ?plantations and second-growth forest that is close to even-aged to a multiaged forest with its abundant native groundcover.

The Forest Service is famous for having managed its forests for multiple uses: wood products, fish and wildlife, recreation, aesthetics, grazing, watershed protection, and historic or scientific values. All these assets apply to the ANF.  Permits are available for taking special resources. One example is worm “grunting” (a market in Sopchoppy offers $30 per can of 500 earthworms); another is maintaining beehives (owners move hives within the forest according to the flowering of tupelo gum trees and gallberry bushes). The forest harbors abundant game and nongame wildlife. Hunting is regulated, and the forest is designated a Wildlife Management Area by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. When other large public holdings contiguous with the ANF are also considered, such as Tates Hell State Forest (~202,400 acres), the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge (68,000 acres), and Lake Talquin State Forest (17,000 acres), the central Florida panhandle has more than 800,000 acres (324,000 hectares) of mostly forested land.