The ecology of an urban woodland in Queens County, New York.
Item
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Title
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The ecology of an urban woodland in Queens County, New York.
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Identifier
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AAI3115253
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identifier
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3115253
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Creator
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Glaeser, Carsten W.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Dwight Kincaid
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Date
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2004
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Biology, Ecology | Biology, Biostatistics
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Abstract
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A forest census was conducted in a 167 ha urban woodland in Forest Park, Queens County, NYC. All woody stems ≥2.0 cm DBH within a permanent and contiguous, professionally surveyed 0.5 ha plot were identified, labeled, measured for diameter, height and x, y coordinates. The plot contained 771 stems from 22 woody taxa in 15 genera and 13 families, reflecting a Shannon-Wiener diversity index of 2.17 and Simpson's Index of 0.162. Five species were singletons and three species were non-native. Stem density was 1542 stems ha-1 . Stem diameters ranged from 2.0 to 116.7 cm (mean DBH 8.55 cm). The largest trees were oaks (Q. rubra, Q. velutina and Q. alba). Lower and upper quartiles of the stem size generated a small diameter class dominated by Betula lenta, Phellodendron amurense, Cornus florida and Prunus serotina. The large diameter class was dominated by Quercus rubra, Betula lenta, Q. velutina and Cornus Florida. During the latter half of the 20 th century botanists classified Forest Park as an oak, mixed dicot-dogwood forest. This census revealed a young tree population largely dominated by pioneer species. The dominance hierarchy by importance values placed Betula lenta as the dominant taxon followed by Quercus rubra, Phellodendron amurense and Cornus florida. Phellodendron amurense Rupr. (Rutaceae) is a non-native invasive tree from Asia introduced into Forest Park in 1935. Within its natural range it is shade-intolerant yet in Forest Park it is shade-tolerant. As an inference from the observed P. amurense stem relative density of 20.4% to the entire Forest Park woodland, the 50 quadrats were bootstrapped 500,000 times. This yielded 95% confidence intervals suggesting a stem density as low as 11.9% and as high as 30.9%. Kth nearest-neighbor analysis for P. amurense revealed an aggregated distribution with a mean NN distance of 1.55 m. Mantel tests of spatial autocorrelation revealed that close trees tend to have similar basal area. Ecological dominance in this urban forest is being shifted away from its historical legacy by the factors of disturbance and the rapid invasion of non-native trees.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
