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Harvard Forest REU Symposium Abstract 2014
- Title: A snapshot in time: 1830 land-use legacy on present-day Massachusetts forest composition
- Author: Sofie H McComb (The University of Texas at Austin)
- Abstract:
European settlement led to clearing of three-quarters of New England forests for agriculture, while the remaining forests were intensively logged. Peak agricultural landcover in Massachusetts occurred in approximately 1830; after which, farmland abandonment led to reforestation. An 1830 Massachusetts statute required towns to create landcover maps depicting cultural and ecological features. Using the archived maps, I analyzed the long-term land-use legacy of forest clearing on current forest composition. Specifically, I assessed whether sites that were forested in 1830 had a different contemporary species composition than areas that were cleared. I analyzed current inventory data from the USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis database aggregated within 1830 land-use legacy categories and described the difference in species composition and functional traits between areas that were forested versus cleared in 1830. At the state scale, there were few differences in tree species composition between sites that were cleared versus forested in 1830 (A< 0.01 based on Multi-response Permutation Procedure). Mid-successional Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) and red maple (Acer rubrum) account for half of the basal area in both areas. Stratifying and focusing on data-rich parts of the state revealed moderate compositional differences (0.01 < A < 0.1) in 5 of 9 ecoregions. These differences are largely attributable to greater late-successional Eastern hemlock (Tsuga Canadensis) abundance within historically forested sites. Overall, this analysis suggests that more than 180 years of natural and anthropogenic processes have largely erased the legacy of colonial land use on modern forest composition.
- Research Category: Regional Studies
