Cary spongy moth visual defoliation data

The Forest Response to Stress and Damage (frequently referred to as FORSTAD) and long term forest monitoring project began in 1992 to study how mixed-oak forests respond to multiple forms of environmental change. The research took place at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in the Hudson Valley of New York. FORSTAD included several sub-projects including (1) air pollution and nutrient cycling dynamics, (2) spongy moth dynamics, (3) small mammal dynamics and (4) vegetation dynamics. This dataset is a contribution to the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, and is part of the Long term monitoring of forest ecosystems: Cary spongy moth dynamics.

To understand the impacts of spongy moth, a non-native forest pest, every stage of the spongy moth life cycle was monitored. This included counts of spongy moths in each life stage as well as the effects of the caterpillar’s consumption of forest trees. The measurements included spongy moth egg mass density and fecundity, egg mass hatch and parasitism, late instar larval density, pupal density (at high density), canopy photos to estimate defoliation, visual estimate of defoliation, mechanisms of moth release, including white footed mouse and chipmunk removals in 1995, 1997 and 1998, larval & pupal persistence, pupal predation, natural pupation and pupal viral analysis.

The data included here are visual defoliation estimates made in summer 1991 from 4 FORSTAD sites: Red and Yellow Grids, Teahouse Hill Plots and North Canoe Hill Trees.

File list:

Spongy_Moth_Visual_Defoliation_Data_1991.csv

Spongy_Moth_Visual_Defoliation_Metadata_public.pdf - contains complete project metadata, personnel, methodology, bibliography, and definitions for data variables.

See Related Materials for more data from the spongy moth sub-project.