Do Parks Help Forests?

Abstract

National Parks were created to help protect nature. But does that protection really matter? Are forests inside parks actually any better off than nearby forests outside of parks? How could you even tell? To find out, we studied thousands of trees inside of parks. We measured every tree’s diameter to see how big it was and returned 4 years later to see how they had changed. Then we compared the trees in parks to thousands of other trees that had been measured in similar unprotected forests nearby. It turns out that there are more trees growing in parks, and large trees are much more common. Trees in parks are less likely to die, but due to their large size, they grow more slowly. Parks even have more dead trees and dead wood on the forest floor. All of these things are signs of a healthy forest.