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Harvard Forest REU Symposium Abstract 2023

• Title: Land Use History Exerts Long Term Effects on Tree Community Composition
• Author: Katie A Knight (Wellesley College)
• Abstract:

  Harvard Forest may seem wild, but it has undergone significant transformations at the hands of humans. In the 1700s, European settlers cleared much of the original forest to make room for pasture and cultivated land, while the remaining tree patches were maintained as woodlots. Although these sites were abandoned in the late 1800s and a new generation of trees replaced the ones that were lost, the extent to which forest composition remained affected by past human activity was unclear. In order to assess whether land-use legacies fade or persist over time, I analyzed tree community composition in 42 permanent plots at Harvard Forest. The plots were established in 1937 and then re-measured in 1992, 2013, and 2023. Using multivariate analysis, I discovered that for each measurement period tree composition in plots with cultivated and pasture land use history was distinct from those with woodlot history. Furthermore it appears that pasture and cultivated tree composition is converging, albeit slowly, with woodlot composition over time. Despite this slight convergence, my findings demonstrate that Harvard Forest tree composition continues to reflect land use histories that are more than a century old.

• Research Category: Large Experiments and Permanent Plot Studies