Objectives: Our objective for this study was to identify the potential climate and pollution variables that have been best associated with sugar maple, red maple, yellow birch and American beech growth in Vermont over the past several decades.
Principal Investigator: Rebecca Stern, Paul Schaberg, Shelly Rayback, Paula Murakami, Christopher Hansen, Gary Hawley
Laboratory: Schaberg Lab
Recommended Citation: Stern RL, Schaberg PG, Rayback SA, Hansen CF, Murakami PF, and Hawley GJ. 2022. Growth trends and environmental drivers of major tree species of the Northern Hardwood Forest.
Project Contents: Data for 30 Plots, 688 Trees, 4095 Cores
Project Period: 2014-08-30 to 2020-02-19
Species:
Acer rubrum
Acer saccharum
Betula alleghaniensis
Fagus grandifolia
Data License: 
What's this?Description: We measured tree rings for 688 dominant and codominant sugar maple, red maple, yellow birch and American beech trees at 30 VT sites, and statistically compared growth to tree and stand characteristics and regional climate and pollutant deposition data.
Related Publications:
- Stern, R.L., Schaberg, P.G., Rayback, S.A., Hansen, C.F., Murakami, P.F. and Hawley, G.J. 2022. Growth trends and environmental drivers of major tree species of the northern hardwood forest of eastern View
Project Metadata
Taxonomic standard used: USDA Plants Database
How plots were selected: Sites were chosen that would provide a broad representation of mature sugar maple, red maple, yellow birch and American beech trees. Areas with a known history of management over the past several decades were avoided.
How trees were selected: Approximately 15-20 dominant and co-dominant trees for each species collected were selected at each site.
Exclusion of trees (if any): Trees with bole or crown damage were excluded.
How cores were collected: Two 5 mm increment cores were extracted from each tree at breast height, 180° from each other, and perpendicular to the slope.
How cores were processed: Increment cores were dried, mounted and sanded using standard methods. Tree rings were visually crossdated using the list method, microscopically measured using a Velmex sliding stage unit and MeasureJ2X software (0.001 mm resolution) followed by the use of COFECHA to detect and correct crossdating errors.
Exclusion of cores (if any): A small number of cores were discarded since they were poorly correlated with the master chronology (i.e., below Pearson critical correlation 99% confidence levels) due to unusual growth trends that were not representative of overall site growth.
Added to the database: 05/14/2020
Last modified: 11/21/2022