Influence of adjacent land use on understory vegetation of New York forests

The understory vegetation was sampled in sixty sugar maple (Acer saccharum) forest stands in central New York in order to investigate the influence of anthropogenic disturbance on understory community structure. Stands were chosen so that land use adjacent to the forest fell within one of three categories: agriculture, residential area, or roadway. Each site was sampled at the forest edge, 30 m into the forest, and in the adjacent open community (field or lawn). Sampling included all herbaceous plants and any woody plants < 0.5 m tall. Differences in understory community structure were found among land use categories for both species richness and cover measurements. Residential edges exhibited greater species richness, cover, number of herbaceous dicots, number of introduced species, and number of annual species than did agricultural edges. Residential edges also exhibited more similarity (number of shared species) to the adjacent lawn community than did agricultural edges to adjacent fields, indicating potentially greater species exchange for forests in the vicinity of more populated areas. Interior samples from the three land use categories were similar, differing only in the number of introduced species present in the understory.