Historical GIS Data for Harvard Forest Properties from 1908 to Present

Since 1908, the Harvard Forest has conducted forest surveys approximately every 10-20 years on its three largest tracts (total 1033 ha). These maps have been digitized along with maps of environmental factors (topography, soils), disturbance (1938 hurricane, historical land-use), and silvicultural treatments. These datalayers will allow researchers to understand the influence of environment factors, disturbances, and silviculture on the structure and composition of modern forest stands as well as assisting in locating and describing research sites. The dataset also includes an elevation grid (NED 30 meter cells), and a shapefile of linear features (trails, stonewalls, etc). Original maps were transcribed to standardized basemaps by various researchers. These basemaps were then scanned and digitized as shapefiles in ArcView GIS 3.2. The shapefiles were then transformed to Massachusetts State Plane Meters NAD83 projection in ArcGIS and rubbersheeted to align better with aerial photographs downloaded from MassGIS. Locations of control points will be permanently archived at the Harvard Forest to facilitate transformation of future datalayers.