Biodiversity & Ecology

English

Abstract: Shortly after Observatory Woods (an oak-hickory forest) was purchased by the University of Wisconsin in 1956, Robert Burgess conducted a detailed vegetation inventory via a grid system of 30.5x30.5m contiguous stands within 4 hectares. In his Master’s Thesis (1959) he provides maps of species distributions of 16 tree species and 138 herbaceous species. In the summer of 2007 I resampled the understory and tree layers of Observatory Woods to investigate changes in local species distributions, and to determine which species are microhabitat specialists and which are microhabitat generalists. Following Burgess 1959, I established a grid of thirty-eight stands, each slightly less than 1/4 acre, in total encompassing about 8 acres. The corners of some of these stands are marked with a permanent stake. Within each stand, I placed fifteen 1 m2 quadrats, totalling 544 throughout the entire forest (property lines cut off some edges). I collected vegetation data on the ground, shrub, and canopy layers, as well as environmental data throughout the forest. This report describes the available content in the Vegetation Database of Observatory Woods, Wisconsin (GIVD ID NA-US-009).