Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Riparian Vegetation Assemblages And Associated Landscape Factors Across An Urbanizing Metropolitan Area, Christa Von Behren, Andrew Evans Dietrich, J. Alan Yeakley

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

While diverse, native riparian vegetation provides important functions, it remains unclear to what extent these assemblages can persist in urban areas, and under what conditions. We characterized forested riparian vegetation communities across an urbanizing metropolitan area and examined their relationships with surrounding land cover. We hypothesized that native and hydrophilic species assemblages would correlate with forest cover in the landscape. For each of 30 sites in the Portland–Vancouver metro area, we recorded vegetation at 1-cm intervals along 3 transects using the line-intercept method. Land cover was characterized at 2 scales: within 500 m of each site and across the entire …