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Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2013

  • Title: HF-SIGEO plot: progress continues!
  • Primary Author: David Orwig (Harvard Forest)
  • Additional Authors: Jason Aylward (Harvard Forest)
  • Abstract:

    Harvard Forest researchers, with the assistance of scientists from the Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) and the Smithsonian Institute’s Global Earth Observatory (CTFS-SIGEO), continued the census of woody stems within the 35 ha plot located on Prospect Hill in January 2013. Using standardized CTFS-SIGEO methodology, Jay Aylward and 5 field assistants have measured, tagged, painted, and mapped over 20,000 woody stems greater than 1 cm diameter at 1.3 m in the remaining section of forest located in the beaver swamp in the north-central portion of the plot. The swamp is particularly dense, containing 400 to 1100 stems of winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata), highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum), and maleberry (Lyonia ligustrina) per 400m2. To date, Dave Orwig, Jay, and 24 field assistants have tallied over 100,000 stems with only a few plots remaining! All stems will be entered twice into the temporary database and screened for errors. In addition, all 10 x 10 m stem maps will be digitized and every stem converted to x-y coordinates. The HF SIGEO plot is dominated by eastern hemlock and northern hardwood species in upland plots, and will make an excellent comparison with several other hardwood plots in North America and China at similar latitudes. This plot is part of a global array of large-scale plots established by CTFS, which recently expanded sampling efforts into temperate forests to explore ecosystem processes beyond population dynamics and biodiversity. The geography and size of the Harvard Forest plot (500 m x 700 m) was designed to include a continuous, expansive and varied natural forest landscape that will yield opportunities for the study of forest dynamics and demography while capturing a large amount of existing science infrastructure (e.g. eddy flux towers, gauged sections of a small watershed, existing smaller permanent plots) that will enable the integrated study of ecosystem processes (e.g., biogeochemistry, hydrology, carbon dynamics) and forest dynamics . Thus, the resulting data will integrate well with ongoing NSF-funded LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) and NEON (National Ecological Observation Network) studies.

  • Research Category: Large Experiments and Permanent Plot Studies