UNDERSTORY - STATION 2

Station 2 -SKIPS

The understory vegetation in the skips (unthinned areas) responded in the same general way vegetation did in the control area (Station 1). There was very little change in plant cover from year 0 (pretreatment) to year 3 (post-treatment) (graph) but there was an increase in cover from year 3 to year 7 followed by a decline at year 10. The incease in cover for herbaceous plants from year 3 to 7 was very similiar to that seen in the control area and would be attributed to the same factor -- an increase in light due to top and branch breakage after several ice storms.

The biggest increase in herbaceous cover (graph) were for wood sorrel, deer fern, and false lily-of-the-valley. False lily-of-the-valley was the only one where cover continued to increase from year 7 to year 10 but cover was still <10%.

The increase in cover for the shrubs from year 3 to year 7 was much higher than we would have expected just due to ice storms. In this case, we also increased our sample size for vegetation plots between year 3 and 7 and sampled some plots with higher shrub cover. As in the control plot, cover declined from year 7 to 10.