Date of Submission

Fall 2024

Academic Program

Biology

Project Advisor 1

Cathy Collins

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Human disturbance regimes present novel and lasting impacts on the natural landscape. In the last century, a reduced agricultural dependency left Northeastern farms fallow and allowed them to reforest naturally. Although forest cover has increased, evidence of past land use persists within regenerated communities, due in part to soil depletion and the fragmentation of vegetative communities. Structural attributes such as vegetation density and aboveground biomass have started to recover in some systems, but the long-term trajectories for forest compositional stabilization remain poorly understood. I investigated tree communities in forests previously cleared for agriculture and those that were continuously wooded over the same period to identify the continuing legacies of agricultural land use in those systems. I found that large stem composition was distinct between sites that were previously cultivated fields, pastured, and woodlots. However, the composition of small stems introduced notable variation between post-agricultural sites. Comparing this study’s findings to previous surveys could provide a more comprehensive view of future community trajectories. The results of this study indicate that further study is vital to establishing conservation plans for these post-agricultural systems.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
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