Increased forest fragmentation and intensified precipitation are amplifying ecosystem stress in northeastern United States temperate forests. However, we currently have a limited understanding of the belowground impacts of land-use change and climate stressors on belowground tree dynamics. To address this, I explored how root biomass and morphology of Acer rubrum, Quercus rubra, and Pinus strobus change with time across a land cover gradient (forest clearing to interior) as well as with a precipitation manipulation treatment (drought and water addition). I hypothesized: 1) Root biomass Quercus rubra as the dominant species present at the forest edge and concentrated at deeper depths to support enhanced groundwater acquisition; 2) Root traits will vary across species according to the general differences in their rooting strategies, with increased variability reflecting plasticity or adaptation to water stress and edge effects over time. The Climate Interactions with Forest Fragmentation (CLIFF) experiment at Harvard Forest provides insight into the potential implications of present changes in land use and environmental stressors on northeastern United States forests. At the CLIFF site, I collected soil cores to extract roots from and measured the ratio of the species’ biomass and morphological root traits (branching intensity, specific root length, root density, root tip number, etc.). These root data show the observable belowground dynamics at each depth increment, across the land cover gradient, amidst the water manipulation treatments (drought, control, and addition), at varying depth increments, and analyzed across multiple time points (June/July 2024; June 2025; October 2025). These findings provide key information on the changes temperate forest systems experience through time and elucidate the changes in forest productivity with ecological stress.