Vegetation monitoring – Southwest Alaska Network: 2012 annual report

Miller, Amy; Walton, James

This report summarizes the results of vegetation sampling in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve (LACL) and Katmai National Park and Preserve (KATM) in 2012. Five new spruce woodland monitoring plots were established in Lake Clark (LACL) and Katmai (KATM) National Parks and Preserves in 2012, and twenty existing plots were resampled for the purpose of refining baseline estimates. The twenty sites that were resampled in 2012 consisted of a mix of white spruce woodland (9), open spruce forest (8), and mid- and high elevation tundra (3). Stem diameters were remeasured at all woodland and forest plots in order to improve estimates of basal area and aboveground biomass. Basal area estimates increased by roughly 3%-60% over the original estimates due to the inclusion of smaller-diameter stems. Stem density estimates remained unchanged in forest plots, but increased in many woodland plots. Species cover was remeasured at most sites, yielding estimates of interannual variability of between 0% and 33%. Frequency data were more variable, due to the high number of species that were present at low abundance. At 15 of the 22 forest and woodland sites, including both previously established and new sites, we also sampled for epiphytic lichens using the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) off-frame sampling protocol. The sampling yielded 408 collections, two-thirds of which came from LACL. Species of interest include Normandina pulchella, a potential range extension found at Currant Creek (LACL); Hypogymnia pulverata, a rare lichen found at four forest locations in KATM; and Erioderma pedicillatum, a globally endangered lichen known from Scandinavia, southeastern Canada, and the upper Cook Inlet region of Alaska. It was found in 2009 at a forest site in KATM that was resampled in 2012.

Vegetation monitoring – Southwest Alaska Network: 2012 annual report

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