The continuous growth of industry and manmade structures is increasingly fragmenting our world’s forest ecosystems. This fragmentation creates more forest edges, unique ecosystems more exposed to harsher wind and sun conditions than the forest interior. The goal of this project is to better understand how forest edges impact soil invertebrate communities and decomposition rates, factors that are key for assessing the health of the forest. Due to the more extreme environment of the forest edge and clearing, it is expected to see less diverse communities and reduced decomposition at those sites when compared to the forest interior. By collecting leaf litter bags containing red maple (Acer rubrum) leaves set out for a year at the Harvard Forest CLIFF site, we were able to estimate decomposition rates at the forest edge and interior. To investigate decomposer dynamics I collected leaf litter samples at CLIFF and used Berlese funnels and a stereo microscope to identify the invertebrate taxa and compare the communities across the different treatments: forest interior, edge, disturbed path, and clearing. Takeaways from this project will aid in understanding the impact of forest fragmentation in New England and other temperate broadleaf forests.