PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #38: Vegetation Analysis.
Wednesday, August 7. Presentation from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM. Exhibit Hall B & C, TCC

Vegetation analysis of a wind-disturbed and salvage-logged subalpine forest.

Rumbaitis-del Rio, Cristina^*,1,2, Wessman, Carol^1,2, ¹ Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, CO² Department of Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology, Boulder, CO

ABSTRACT- This research examines the effect of blowdown disturbance and salvage-logging disturbance on understory vegetation community composition in a subalpine forest ecosystem in the Southern Rocky Mountain Region. The study site sustained a catastrophic blowdown disturbance in 1997. In subsequent years, selected blowdown areas have been salvage-logged. This study compares the blowdown disturbance with the salvage-logging disturbance, using areas of intact forest as a control. Vegetation was sampled in a spatially explicit manner in 0.25m² quadrats in July, 2001. Results demonstrate that species diversity and percent vegetation cover are higher in blowdown areas than in logged areas. Furthermore, logged areas tend to be dominated by disturbance-loving species, such as fireweed (Epilobium angustifolium) and nitrogen fixing species, such as lupine (Lupinus sp.). This study also makes use of spatial statistical techniques to examine the second-order relationships between selected species, and between pioneer and non-pioneer species. This study examines how spatial patterns in species relationships are altered by disturbance effects. Finally, this study uses semivariance analysis to examine the spatial scale of variation of each of the plant communities described.

KEY WORDS: forest disturbance, spatial statistics, vegetation analysis, wind disturbance