Natural Community/ Forest Type

View from Corner One of our Site, looking to the center

View of the slope of our Site

In every community, there are certain characteristics which define the region as a specific type. The factors in the determination of the “natural community” include what types of trees, shrubs, and other vegetation thrive there and their density, soil type, light availability, the relative wet or dryness, what region in the larger ecosystem in which it is found (for example, ours was in Niquette Bay State Park in Vermont), climate, and weather among other things.

 
Our natural forest type is characterized as a Dry Oak-Hickory-Hophornbeam Forest. Like it’s name gives away, the main species of tree located in the hectare were Northern Red Oak, Shagbark Hickory and Eastern Hophornbeam with American Beech, Eastern White Pine and Sugar Maple also appearing on occasion. For the most part, there were far more deciduous trees than coniferous. The hectare is not dense in its tree coverage, and has a lot of newer growth. Since the tree coverage was not dense there was also thinner canopy coverage and a lot of light able to reach the ground. 

 The soil here is fairly dry, covered in a thin layer of debris. It is on a downward slope with the lowest point being on what we labeled as C4 (Corner 4) on our map. About a foot into the ground is a rocky layer (which we discovered in trying to dig our soil pits) and below that there is likely to be bedrock.

 
On the ground is not too much vegetation, but there are Wild Sasparilla and Woodland Sedge scattered throughout the entire hectare, a sparse amount of ferns in a few areas (mostly near exposed rock) and moss.

All of the characteristics shown by our hectare indicate that we are in a Dry Oak-Hickory-Hophornbeam Forest.

We do not think that our plot was very representative of Niquette Bay State Park in it's entirety. Reasons for this included the fact that Niquette has a wide variety of different landscapes, including hills and valleys, as well as the bay itself and marshes. Our plot was on the top of one of these hills, and therefore would not have all the same features as a plot in a valley, or a marsh. While our plot was fairly dry, a marshy area would not be and would have a completely different make-up. Our plot would, however, likely be similar to another plot with the same conditions represented.







Biggest Tree

The largest tree that we found was an oak tree, at the intersection of the border connected Corners 3&4 and the trail running through our site. The DBH of the tree was 25in., which compared to the other trees in our hectare was huge. (On average, the other trees had a DBH of ~12in.) Using a clinometer, we concluded that the tree was 24.9 meters (81.7 feet) base to canopy top. We would estimate the oak we found to be roughly 100 years old! To get the approximate age of the tree, we used the DBH found and multiplied it by the growth factor of red oak tree species. The growth factor is 4.0, so we multiplied 25 in. * 4.0 = 100. Growth factors vary between species, which means that just because this tree is the largest, it may not necessarily be the oldest on the hectare. For example, Shagbark Hickories have a growth factor of 7.5, and one of the Shagbark Hickories that we found was 13in DBH. According to the growth factor calculation, the Shagbark Hickory and the Oak would be approximately the same age!