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Full-Text Articles in Forest Sciences

Carbon Sequestration In A Restored West Michigan Oak Savanna: Implications For Management Practices, Jeffrey A. Heise Aug 2020

Carbon Sequestration In A Restored West Michigan Oak Savanna: Implications For Management Practices, Jeffrey A. Heise

Masters Theses

The savanna system is an ecosystem (i.e. a transitional ecosystem) that lies between forest and grassland ecosystems. They occur across the world in various forms, but in the North American Midwest they are specifically oak savannas: systems where the open overstory is dominated by various species of oak (Quercus spp.) and the understory consists of carbon-rich prairie grasses and forbs. This ecosystem is a highly degraded ecosystem and has lost almost 99% of its former range due to agriculture and fire suppression. Since savannas are fire-evolved systems, they are maintained by and require fire as a regular disturbance to …


Floodplain Forest Regeneration Dynamics In The Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Valley, Whitney Anne Kroschel Jul 2020

Floodplain Forest Regeneration Dynamics In The Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Valley, Whitney Anne Kroschel

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Floodplain forest species diversity is driven, in part, by variation in disturbance regime. Flood patterns create heterogeneity in microsite quality from small differences in elevation across a floodplain which, in turn, influence flood timing and duration. Differences in species’ regeneration niches in relation to hydrologic patterns can account for long-term coexistence of various species. In the past century floodplain forests have exhibited a wide range of changes in stand development and species composition as a result of altered hydrology in rivers and floodplains. I evaluated the role of regeneration in floodplain forest systems of the Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Valley …


Using Dendrochronology To Create A Timescale Of Succession On Nurse Logs In The Olympic Temperate Rainforest, Sean Grealish Jan 2020

Using Dendrochronology To Create A Timescale Of Succession On Nurse Logs In The Olympic Temperate Rainforest, Sean Grealish

Summer Research

Previous work on the Olympic peninsula in Washington State has shown that recently fallen trees provide a germination location for seeds that cannot do so on the forest floor due to thick moss mats. My field work over two summers dating and surveying nurse logs yielded a crossover at ~70 years where ground mosses start to dominate over tree mosses and seedling abundance begins to decrease.


Is Context Dependency Imperative To Understanding The Impacts Of Invasive Plants?, Brendan B. Haile Jan 2020

Is Context Dependency Imperative To Understanding The Impacts Of Invasive Plants?, Brendan B. Haile

Masters Theses

Introduced exotic species have a tendency to become invasive and impact local biological communities. Invasions often impact community attributes such as cover and species richness, but these factors may also regulate patterns of invasion. In such cases, impacts may be dependent on the invasion context. We used data from the Buell-Small Succession Study, a long-term permanent plot study in the piedmont region of New Jersey, to document context dependency in invasion. To do this, we analyzed the factors that affected the colonization and growth of four invasive species, Alliaria petiolata, Lonicera japonica, Microstegium vimineum and Rosa multiflora, as well …