Cary Vegetation Study 1984 1985 OVERVIEW

The Cary Vegetation Study was a project established in the early 1980's by Charlie Canham, Mark McDonnell, Steward Pickett and others to describe the vegetation of the Cary Arboretum.

The objectives of the project were described in the document titled: "RESEARCH PROPOSAL: The Vegetation of the Cary Arboretum" The proposed research has 4 principal objectives:

(1) To quantify the variation in composition and structure of forest, field and wetland plant communities within the Cary Arboretum, including an ordination of the forest communities to identify major plant community types.

(2) To examine the relationships between the vegetation of the Cary Arboretum and environmental and historical factors.

(3) To provide an extensive data-base of information on the vegetation of the Cary Arboretum, keyed to the standard grid system.

(4) To provide a network of sample sites that can be combined with existing vegetation maps, to provide an updated vegetation map based on the results of the analyses described in (1) and ( 2 ) above.

The project was subdivided into three subprojects:

1. A survey of upland fields

2. A survey of forests, which established the permanent plots referred to as the "Cary Forest Plots"

3. A land use history, which included interviews with people who remembered land use at the time that Mary Flagler Cary purchased the property

The Cary Vegetation Study of 1984 & 1985 contains 7 data repositories:

1. Cary Vegetation Study 1984 1985 OVERVIEW

2. Cary Vegetation Study 1984 1985 CARY FOREST PLOT MISCELLANEOUS

3. Cary Vegetation Study 1984 1985 CARY FOREST PLOT TREE RING DATA

4. Cary Vegetation Study 1984 1985 CARY FOREST PLOT DATA SUMMARIES

5. Cary Vegetation Study 1984 1985 CARY FOREST PLOT SOIL CHEMISTRY & TEXTURE

6. Cary Vegetation Study 1984 1985 UPLAND FIELDS STUDY

7. Cary Vegetation Study 1984 1985 LAND USE HISTORY

The following publication was a culmination of the data collected in the 1980's:

GLITZENSTEIN, J. S., C. D. CANHAM, M. J. MCDONNELL, AND D. R. STRENG. 1990. Effects of environment and land-use history on upland forests of the Cary Arboretum, Hudson Valley, New York. Bull. Torrey Bot. Club 117: 106–122.

The Cary Forest Plots were resurveyed in 2006 and results were published in:

Katz, D.S.W., Lovett, G.M., Canham, C.D., & O'Reilly, C.M. 2010. Legacies of land use history diminish over 22 years in a forest in southeastern New York. Bull. Torrey Bot. Soc. 137: 236–251.