Effect of Forest Harvest on the Vegetation of an Urban Park

Abstract

Abstract Forested parks are an urban oasis, and forest management plays an important part in their maintenance. I used a systematic sampling technique to quantify the vegetation and propagule bank in a small urban park prior to and following a forest management event. The number of non-forest species and the abundance of Toxicodendron radicans (Poison Ivy) increased after forest harvest. Distance from an edge did not affect the change in vegetation. In the propagule bank, loss of basal area in a plot was positively correlated with an increase in the percent of species that were non-forest and non-native. The Sorenson coefficient of community similarity comparing the species composition of the vegetation before and after harvest was 0.769 (out of 1.0), but that for the propagule bank was 0.308. Forest management practices in small urban parks should be designed with extreme caution due to the volatile settings of these refuges.