Forest Inventory for Tree Demography and Carbohydrate Reserves at Harvard Forest 2009-2011

The objective of this study is to establish a network of forest plots spanning the eastern U.S. focused on understanding how regional scale climate patterns affect patterns of tree demography (e.g. growth, mortality, dieback). Within each research site we also aim to understand the landscape-scale variability in demographic rates and how these rates are affected by edaphic variables by aligning plots along primary environmental gradients (elevation, soils, hydrology, fire return interval). The demographic data obtained will also be compared to regional and landscape-scale patterns in carbon reserves in adults and sapling by sampling root and stem concentrations of nonstructural carbohydrates (TNC) and relate these to demographic patterns, life-history traits, and plant C:N ratios. Besides addressing important ecological questions directly, this study is designed to improve the representations of vegetation dynamics and carbohydrate reserves in regional and landscape-scale forest ecosystem models--two of the least data-constrained processes in such models--by parameterizing and validating the modules for these processes in the Ecosystem Demography model (ED v2.1). This data set contains two years of census data for eight mapped plots distributed across Harvard Forest along the aforementioned primary environmental gradients.