Suffering more quietly, but noticeably, are the animals, trees and plants of the Piedmont woodlands and the aquatic life in the area's drying-up rivers and streams.

The drought is having a "profound effect" on the Eno River, said Dave Cook, superintendent of Eno River State Park, northwest of Durham.

North Carolina streams are less than 25 percent of normal for this time of year.

The water level in the Eno River measures about one foot, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Just to keep water at that minimal level, state officials daily are releasing water into the river from Lake Orange, Cook said.

Trees in the Piedmont are also suffering.

"I've never seen as much wilting and dead branches, leaves, and trees as I have this year," said Peter White, director of the North Carolina Botanical Garden. "There seems to be more damage and in a wider range of species than I've seen before," he said.

Dogwoods are perhaps the hardest hit of local trees. Dead and dying dogwoods can be seen throughout the Triangle.

One sign of the drought's severity is that native trees that usually are considered to be drought-tolerant -- such as redbud and post oak -- are having widespread problems and even dying, White said.

"I suspect many of them are goners," White said.

Some trees with dead branches and leaves could resprout from the roots or trunk, he said. Until spring comes, the extent of tree deaths will be unknown.

In the Eno River, the low water level is resulting in profuse blooms of plants such as algae and hydrilla that can endanger aquatic life, Cook said.

Hydrilla, an exotic plant thought to have entered the wild through the aquarium trade, is "taking over the river," Cook said, as it quickly colonizes newly bare shoreline.

The blooms of vegetation in the Eno River may lead to fish kills in the winter, as the decaying of dead plants robs the water of oxygen, Cook said.

Further north at Falls Lake, biologists are concerned about another exotic plant, water primrose, that has taken advantage of the drought by taking over a dry beach, said Emily Parisher, Piedmont regional biologist for State Parks. In smaller bodies of water, the aggressive water primrose is capable of becoming thick enough that boats can't move through the water.

Meanwhile, as smaller tributaries and streams have dried up, exposed freshwater mussels are falling victim to raccoons, Parisher said.

"It's a bust for mussels but a boom for raccoons," she said.

White-tailed deer may be under stress too, as dead and wilting plants limit their food supply. Keith Nealson, park ranger at William B. Umstead Park in Raleigh, has observed deer out and about in the middle of the day nearly every day. That usually indicates the deer are having to spend more time foraging, he said.

The widespread browning and dropping of leaves gives the Triangle the feel of autumn, more than a month ahead of schedule. At William B. Umstead Park, "maintenance crews have pretty much given up lawn mowing and moved to leaf blowing," Nealson said. The woods are so dry that the risk of fire is very high.

Biologist Parisher points out that leaf dropping, while unattractive in the landscape, is an adaptation that trees have developed to cope with drought. Leaves lose water through microscopic openings, and dropping leaves therefore helps trees to conserve water.

In the long-term, no one knows how this year's severe drought will affect Piedmont North Carolina ecosystems. Most native plants can withstand one year of drought, but cumulative stresses can be fatal. If rainfall next year is normal, most trees and other plants should recover, but aquatic life could take longer to rebound, Cook said.

This year's extreme heat and dryness fits with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's predictions that global warming may result more frequent droughts and hotter weather in the Southeast United States.

Bill Holman, visiting senior fellow at Duke University's Nicholas School for Environmental Policy Solutions, sees the severe drought as a wake-up call for North Carolina leaders to find ways to promote water conservation.

The combination of global warming and ongoing development in the Triangle area will make smart management of water essential, Holman said. State leaders need to make plans and regulations to ensure that as the state continues to develop, there is enough clean water to support both human needs and the ecological systems we depend upon.

"As we pave over farm and forest land, we're preventing water from slowly penetrating into the soil and being a future source of water," Holman said.

"If we don't change our development patterns and develop in ways that divert and capture rainwater, we will see more streams dry up in the future."