Forest vegetation status in Shenandoah National Park: Long-term ecological monitoring summary report 2003-2011
Cass WB, Hochstedler WB, Williams AB. 2012. Forest vegetation status in Shenandoah National Park: Long-term ecological monitoring summary report 2003-2011. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/MIDN/NRDS—2012/353. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado
This report presents a summary of the forest vegetation monitoring data collected between 2003 and 2011 by the Shenandoah National Park (SHEN) Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) Program, a part of the Mid-Atlantic Inventory and Monitoring Network of the National Park Service. Measurements were made at 160 monitoring sites each of which contains two 15 m line transects, and a single 576 m2 square permanent monitoring plot and associated subplots. Monitoring sites were stratified throughout the park based on combinations of elevation, aspect, and bedrock geology. This report includes results from three sampling blocks, 2003-2005, 2007, and 2008-2011, each of which includes a complete sampling of all 160 vegetation monitoring sites. The SHEN forest monitoring program seeks to evaluate changes in forest composition, structure, regeneration, and growth as influenced by natural and anthropogenic factors over time, while also providing information on woody debris and snags abundance, and soil composition (Smith and Torbert 1990, Cass et al. 2011). All data summarized in this report were collected according to the specifications of the program’s current forest vegetation monitoring protocol (Cass et al. 2011). The results reported here provide highlights of the available data. Additional analytical measures are being investigated and will be reported in the future to examine trends over time.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Cass, Wendy; Hochstedler, Wendy; Williams, Alan
- Date of Issue
- 2012-08
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- MIDN , NRSS , SHEN
- Keywords
- Monitoring, Vegetation, Vegetation Monitoring