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Harvard Forest REU Symposium Abstract 2022
- Title: Forest regeneration: how the rate of forest biomass accumulation and diversity differ in harvested and unharvested plantation plots at the Harvard Forest
- Author: Ellie Jessica Kerns (Amherst College)
- Abstract:
As anthropogenic forces continue to drive land-use change and forest harvest it is important to understand how forests respond to these disturbances. The widespread degradation of forests could have far-reaching impacts on diversity. Decreases in diversity could lead to a reduction in the forests’ resistance to natural or anthropogenic disturbances. It is not well understood how rates of accumulation in forest biomass and diversity change as conifer plantations in central New England regenerate. Trends at the Harvard Forest suggest that old plantations are experiencing high mortality as they age. I investigate how biomass accumulation, basal area, and Shannon’s diversity index differ in harvested and unharvested plots after 15 years. This is important in order to observe how forest diversity influences productivity across harvested and unharvested plantation plots. This study uses tree diameter at breast height (DBH) data for every tree over 2.5 cm taken at 22 plots 13 harvested and 9 unharvested) at the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Petersham, MA. Additionally, this study accounts for the species richness and evenness of trees at each plot which will be used to calculate the Shannon’s Diversity Index. My findings suggest an upwards trend of both biomass accumulation and basal area in harvested plots and a downwards trend in unharvested plots. There also appears to be an upwards trend of Shannon’s diversity in both harvested and unharvested plots above pre-harvest levels, but harvested plots show a higher diversity overall.
- Research Category: Forest-Atmosphere Exchange; Biodiversity Studies
