Percent cover of under- and mid-story vegetation and seedling counts in the Future of Oak Forests project at Black Rock Forest, Cornwall, NY.

Black Rock Forest established a series of 12, 0.56 ha plots in 2005 to assess impacts of the loss of tree in the genus Quercus on the forest ecosystem (entitled the Future of Oak Forests experiment). Three trunk girdling treatments, with control plots were instituted in 2008. Each plot also contained an ~10m by ~15m deer exclosure to assess the impact of herbivory post-disturbance. In 2006 and 2008, before exclosures were erected, pre-treatment surveys were conducted in all unexclosed (n=120) quadrats. Surveys of all 240 understory quadrats were conducted annually in late summer (August to September) from 2009 to 2018 and then again in 2021. At each quadrat, trained observers identified all vascular plants to species and assigned each species a percent cover value. The percent cover of moss was also recorded but moss species were not identified. Counts of tree seedlings and some woody shrubs were also recorded in addition to percent cover values. Seedlings were considered saplings, and therefore not counted, once they reached 1.3 m tall (breast height).