Settlement-Era Tree Composition, Ohio: Level 1

Ohio Township Surveys (OTS) provide spatially aggregated witness tree counts within the town/township polygons that were tallied from early land survey records of town outlines and lotting subdivisions. Overall dates ranged from 1623 to 1870, but varied by town and were recorded about the time of first settlement of the town. A myriad of archived sources were tapped from town, state and national repositories, historical societies and private collections. The SetTreeComp_Ohio_Level1_v1.0 database includes records throughout the domain from the Connecticut Western Reserve at the Connecticut State Archives and various records in the Ohio State Archives collated by Charles Cogbill, the collections of the Ohio Biological Survey through the efforts of Ronald Stuckey and the McLachlan lab at Notre Dame University, and records of the Ohio Land Company by James Dyer and the Marietta College Archives. Every effort was used to avoid duplication of trees. The taxa classes were generally genera or unambiguous categories based on the vernacular names used by the surveyors. In several cases (black gum/sweet gum, ironwood, poplar/tulip poplar, cedar/juniper), because of ambiguity in the common tree names used by surveyors, a group represents trees from different families and even orders. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants #DEB-1241874, 1241868, 1241870, 1241851, 1241891, 1241846, 1241856, 1241930.