Forests act as critical global carbon sinks, yet accelerating fragmentation and climate-induced drought threaten forest carbon sequestration. Non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs), primarily soluble sugars and starches, serve as vital physiological buffers for trees when stress limits carbon fixation. This project investigates how carbon storage changes under the single and interactive effects of forest fragmentation and reduced or increased water availability. Further, we are interested in whether carbon allocation shifts between storage or growth under these stressors. We hypothesize that NSC levels will be highest in trees closer to the edge and with more water, as light and water drive photosynthesis. We leveraged the Climate Interactions and Forest Fragmentation (CLIFF) experiment, which combines a forest edge treatment with a natural soil moisture gradient that is amplified through seasonal drought and irrigation treatments. We investigated stem wood cores from 32 red oak (Quercus rubra) trees across the initial 3 years of the CLIFF experiment. We ground these samples to a fine powder, then extracted the sugars with hot ethanol, and digested a starch hydrolysate via a two-step enzymatic digestion. We colorimetrically quantified soluble sugar and starch hydrolysate fractions using spectrophotometry and analyzed via linear regression modeling in R. Preliminary results suggest that there is a trend of increasing starch with increasing soil moisture along the natural soil moisture gradient. By quantifying how NSC storage responds to exposed edge microclimates and severe drought, this research provides information needed to accurately project whether fragmented forests will persist as global carbon sinks.