Document: NIK-3-40-32

Forest decline assessment of northern hardwood forests in the southern Appalachians.

NICHOLAS, N.S.* ¹, C.HUBER ² and W.JACKSON ³

Tennessee Valley Authority, Norris, TN 37828 ¹
USDA Forest Service, Roanoke, VA 24019-3050 ²
USDA Forest Service, Asheville, NC 28802 ³

Abstract:
Recently released reports by several environment stakeholder groups have focused on the health of the northern hardwood forest in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of VA, NC, and TN. Their findings indicate that obvious damage was limited to elevations above 1370 m and suggested that the northern hardwood forest of the southern Appalachians is in an advanced stage of decline. According to their data, a number of hardwood species exhibit similar decline symptoms with no primary pathogens in evidence. Their reports have linked the forest condition to high levels of air pollution. While significant long-term monitoring has been conducted in the region's high elevation spruce-fir ecosystem, there has been little baseline information published in peer reviewed journals on the region's northern hardwood forest. This study was designed to provide well documented data sets with a design that allows for long-term analysis so that northern hardwoods forest health issues could be viewed within the context of scientific literature. The study objectives were to complete a forest condition assessment in areas of reportedly high forest damage and evaluate stands for damage due to abiotic and biotic stressors. The project to date has consisted of two sampling efforts: 1) an intensive permanent plot system based on a stratified random sampling design (stratified by elevation and macro-aspect) in areas reported to have forest damage, and 2) a systematic sampling of the overstory across regional northern hardwoods forests. Our presentation will give an overview of overstory community structure and indices of current stand health. We found that overstory species composition changes rather significantly with an increase in elevation. At lower elevations, the forest is dominated by sugar maple (~ 50 % of the live basal area (LBA)) and American beech (32% LBA). In contrast at higher elevations, the forest is dominated by yellow birch (38 % LBA) and American beech with 23% of the LBA and sugar maple makes up less than 10% of the overstory. Eleven % of standing trees are dead, most are birch and beech at the higher elevations. Within the next year, metadata from this study will be made available to all interested scientists to facilitate comparison and collaboration of information on this northern hardwoods ecosystem.

Keywords: Northern Hardwoods, Forest Decline, Southern Appalachians

This abstract is being presented at: 2:30 PM in session:
Oral Session #16: Plant Demography: Trees and Shrubs.