Vegetation community monitoring at Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas: 2007–2014
Leis SA. 2017. Vegetation community monitoring at Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas: 2007–2014. Natural Resource Data Series. NPS/HTLN/NRDS—2017/1104. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado
The forest at Hot Springs National Park is an important resource for a variety of reasons. The mountain area is in the recharge zone for the hot springs and the forest provides other important ecosystem services. The Heart-land Inventory and Monitoring Network installed seven monitoring sites in the northern forests in 2007. The sites were revisited in 2014. We conducted analyses of the overstory (basal area, density, and canopy cover) and understory communities. Our analyses indicate that the overstory continues to be characteristic of an oak-hick-ory-pine forest, although other early seral type trees are increasing. An increase of small diameter trees indicates that succession is occurring in the absence of fire in these sites. The regeneration data also indicate that early seral species are being recruited into more mature stages of forest growth. The understory was sparsely vegetated in both monitoring events. Very few exotic species were observed in any of the forest components assessed and understory composition of monitoring sites was fairly homogenous as evidenced by beta diversity values. Future monitoring events will allow for additional analysis of overstory composition as well as continued observations of the herbaceous community and fuels.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Leis, Sherry
- Date of Issue
- 2017-05
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- HOSP , HTLN , NRSS
- Keywords
- HTLN, HTLN Plant Communities Monitoring, Long-term monitoring, Monitoring, Plant community, Vegetation, Woodland