Restoring the South's longleaf pine can also save water, study says

Longleaf pine forests, like this one at Ft. Stewart, once covered tens of millions of acres in the Southeast. (Stephen B. Morton for WABE)

The pine forests that once covered much of the South could be part of an answer to water scarcity problems in the future.

A recent study published in the journal, Science of The Total Environment, finds that healthy longleaf pine forests keep more water in streams.

While Georgia generally gets a lot of rain, in drought years things can get tight – enough so that Georgia, Alabama and Florida have argued for decades over shared water resources.