Thursday 4pm, Hutch 316

We have a couple of special presentations this week. Annalise Kjolhede (left) and Julia Cosgrove (right) will present overviews of their undergraduate honors theses.

Annalise will be presenting her work on the soils and geology of Monroe County entitled “The Influence of Landforms and Soils on the Vegetation of Monroe County, New York.”

Julia will be presenting her work on forest structure and coarse woody debris entitled “Stand Structure and Down Woody Debris in Beech-Maple Old-Growth Forests of the Rochester Area.”

Thursday, 4pm Hutch 316

This week we will be talking about the effects of land-use history and the environment on plant distributions. For example, eastern forests were largely cut to make way for agriculture throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries. With the abandonment of eastern agricultural lands in the 20^th century, forests have been regenerating and expanding from forest remnants on land deemed poor for agriculture. More recently, however, urban sprawl and renewed timber cutting has mostly halted the spread of eastern forests.

Flinn, K.M., M. Vellend, and P.L. Marks. 2005. Environmental causes and consequences of forest clearance and agricultural abandonment in central New York, USA. Journal of Biogeography 32:439-452. [doi link]

Drummond, M.A., and T.R. Loveland. 2010. Land-use pressure and a transition to forest-cover loss in the eastern United States. BioScience 60:286-298. [doi link]

a) UR Woodlands 1930

b) UR Woodlands 1961

c) UR Woodlands 1988

d) UR Woodlands 2005