Historical beech and oak forests in Indiana

This data publication contains a shapefile that provides tree percentages for historical beech and oak forests of Indiana. Data provided include the estimated percentage of beech, oak, ash, hickory, and sugar maple found in these forests, between 1799 and 1946, for each township in Indiana. These data were recovered, using unique GIS methods, from historical tree survey information stored in bar chart figures in Potzger et al. (1956) which presented the approximately 214,500 trees surveyed during that time period. The methods, tabular data, and findings are presented in Hanberry (2018).
This purpose of this project was to 1) determine if a unique geographic information system (GIS) method could be used to reclaim information available in published figures, when associated raw data are not available, and also to generate a GIS layer for data provided in Potzger et al. (1956).