Roadside grassland vegetation in an oak forest, Oak Creek Wildlife Area, the Cascade Range, USA

doi:10.3832/ifor0527-003

Roadside grassland vegetation in an oak forest, Oak Creek Wildlife Area, the Cascade Range, USA

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry, Volume 3, Issue 2, Pages 52-55 (2010)
doi: https://doi.org/10.3832/ifor0527-003
Published: Mar 02, 2010 - Copyright © 2010 SISEF

Research Articles

PDF Version

Full Text

Citation

Geo-mapping

Roadside grassland vegetation in a Quercus garryana forest, that is one of the dominant species in west Cascade, on the Oak Creek Wildlife Area, Naches, Washington, USA, was investigated to determine the patterns of human impact on the vegetation along mountain trails. Vegetation and environmental data were collected on forty-eight 50 cm × 50 cm plots. Plot cover ranged from 3 to 100% (1 to 8 species) and most of the cover was from exotic species. In order to explore vegetation patterns the following environmental variables were measured: slope, tree canopy area, bare area, distance from road, and litter thickness. The vegetation data and environmental variables were examined using Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA). CCA showed that canopy area played important roles in vegetation development. Litter thickness and soil firmness also seemed to be related to the vegetation pattern. Distance from the road affected plant cover but was not related to canopy area, and litter thickness, suggesting that the distance was not a prime determinant on the vegetation pattern a priori. Species richness was the highest in mid-vegetation cover plots, i.e., 40-60%. An exotic plant, Sisymbrium officinale, increased in frequency with a decrease in vegetation cover, and two exotic plant species, Achillea millefolium and Anthoxanthum odoratum, occurred with S. officinale. S. officinale may be a good indicator for evaluating environmental deterioration. The preservation of canopy cover is of prime importance for nature conservation in forested recreational areas.

Keywords

Canonical Correspondence Analysis (CCA), Oak forest, Roadside, Litter thickness, Species indicator

Authors’ address

(1)

Graduate School of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810 (Japan)

(2)

Biology Department at SUNY Fredonia, NY 14063 (USA)

Corresponding author

S Tsuyuzaki
tsuyu@ees.hokudai.ac.jp

Citation

Tsuyuzaki S, Titus JH (2010). Roadside grassland vegetation in an oak forest, Oak Creek Wildlife Area, the Cascade Range, USA. iForest 3: 52-55. - doi: 10.3832/ifor0527-003

Academic Editor

Marco Borghetti

Paper history

Received: Nov 05, 2009
Accepted: Dec 29, 2009

First online: Mar 02, 2010
Publication Date: Mar 02, 2010
Publication Time: 2.10 months

Open Access

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Breakdown by View Type

(Waiting for server response...)

Article Usage

Total Article Views: 49921
(from publication date up to now)

Breakdown by View Type
HTML Page Views: 43098
Abstract Page Views: 2568
PDF Downloads: 3369
Citation/Reference Downloads: 69
XML Downloads: 817

Web Metrics
Days since publication: 5378
Overall contacts: 49921
Avg. contacts per week: 64.98

Article Citations

Article citations are based on data periodically collected from the Clarivate Web of Science web site
(last update: Feb 2023)

(No citations were found up to date. Please come back later)

(no Plumx Metrics available for this paper)

Publication Metrics

by Dimensions ^©

Articles citing this article

List of the papers citing this article based on CrossRef Cited-by.

(1)

Colwell RK, Futuyma DJ (1971)
On the measurement of niche breadth and overlap. Ecology 52: 567-576.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(2)

Gelbard JL, Belnap J (2003)
Roads as conduits for exotic plant invasions in a semiarid landscape. Conservation Biology 17: 420-432.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(3)

Gibson RS, Bosch OJH (1996)
Indicator species for the interpretation of vegetation condition in the St Bathans area, central Otago, New Zealand. New Zealand Journal of Ecology 20: 163-172.
Online | Gscholar

(4)

Goudie A (2005)
The human impact on the natural environment: past, present, and future (6^th edn). MIT Press, London, UK, pp. 376.
Gscholar

(5)

Guerrero-Campo J, Montserrat-Marti G (2004)
Comparison of floristic changes on vegetation affected by different levels of soil erosion in Miocene clays and Eocene marls from Northeast Spain. Plant Ecology 173: 83-93.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(6)

Labuz TA, Grunewald R (2007)
Studies on vegetation cover of the youngest dunes of the Swina Gate Barrier (western Polish coast). Journal of Coastal Research 23: 160-172.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(7)

Leps J, Šmilauer P (2003)
Multivariate analysis of ecological data using CANOCO. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(8)

Moreno-de las Heras M, Merino-Martin L, Nicholau JM (2009)
Effects of vegetation cover on the hydrology of reclaimed mining soils under Mediterranean-Continental climate. Catena 77: 39-47.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(9)

Myers JH, Bazely DR (2003)
Ecology and control of introduced plants. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 328.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(10)

NCDC (1993)
US station climatological summaries. National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, NC, USA.
Gscholar

(11)

Oliver CD, Larson BC (1996)
Forest stand dynamics. McGraw-Hill Inc., New York, USA, pp. 544.
Online | Gscholar

(12)

Pottio AP, Beatty SW (2005)
Impacts of recreation trails on exotic and ruderal species distribution in grassland areas along the Colorado Front Range. Environmental Management 36: 230-236.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(13)

Rexroad EA, Beard KH, Kulmatiski A (2007)
Vegetation responses to 35 and 55 years of native ungulate grazing in shrubsteppe communities. Western North American Naturalist 67: 16-25.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(14)

Riegel GM, Smith BG, Franklin JF (1992)
Foothill oak woodlands of the Interior Valleys of Southwestern Oregon. Northwest Science 66: 66-76.
Online | Gscholar

(15)

Sauer T, Ries JB (2008)
Vegetation cover and geomorphodynamics on abandoned field in the Central Ebro Basin (Spain). Geomorphology 102: 267-277.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(16)

Simonds JO (1997)
Landscape architecture: a manual of site planning and design. McGraw-Hill, Inc., New York, USA pp. 352.
Gscholar

(17)

Thiele J, Otte A (2008)
Invasion patterns of Heracleum mantegazzianum in Germany on the regional and landscape scales. Journal for Nature Conservation 16: 61-71.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(18)

Thilenius JF (1968)
The Quercus garryana forests of the Willamette Valley, Oregon. Ecology 49: 1124-1133.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(19)

Thysell DR, Carey AB (2001)
i>Quercus garryana communities in the Puget Trough, Washington. Northwest Science 75: 219-235.
Online | Gscholar

(20)

Trombulak S, Frissell C (2000)
Review of ecological effects of roads on terrestrial and aquatic communities. Conservation Biology 14: 18-30.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(21)

Turton SM (2005)
Managing environmental impacts of recreation and tourism in rainforests of the wet tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area. Geographical Research 43: 140-151.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(22)

Vujnovic K, Wein RW, Dale MRT (2002)
Predicting plant species diversity in response to disturbance magnitude in grassland remnants of central Alberta. Canadian Journal of Botany 80: 504-511.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(23)

Walker LR, Chapin III FS (1987)
Interactions among processes controlling successional change. Oikos 50: 131-135.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(24)

Watkins RZ, Chen J, Pickens J, Brosofske KD (2003)
Effects of forest roads on understory plants in a managed hardwood landscape. Conservation Biology 17: 411-419.
CrossRef | Gscholar

(25)

Zar JH (1999)
Biostatistical analysis. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA, pp. 931.
Gscholar

iForest - Biogeosciences and Forestry

Contents

Search

Journal Info

Journal Subjects and Fields

For Authors

For Reviewers

For Readers

SISEF Publishing

Search iForest Contents