Forest Succession Lab

Over the past few days, we’ve been learning about ecological succession in Honors Environmental Science. Ecological succession is the process when one natural community changes into another over a period of time, typically measured in years or centuries. There are two types of ecological succession: primary and secondary. Primary succession is when species colonize an ecosystem for the first time. Secondary succession is when species re-enter an ecosystem after a catastrophic event such as a wildfire. In order to better understand this process, we completed the “Investigating Forest Succession” lab to see exactly how ecological succession takes place.

The “Investigating Forest Succession” lab instructed our group to study an area of a forest that was fifteen feet wide and two-hundred feet long. We were then to record each tree found, their species, and which stage they were in their life: sapling, young, adult, mature, old, or over-mature. Due to the fact that we became short on time, we used data previously collected from a forest plot in New Jersey with the same requirements we needed to further complete this lab. After reviewing the data, my group and I had to input it into a Google Sheets document. We then used Google Sheets to calculate the total tree density, the density of each species, and the percentage of each species at each age. Following this, we made graphs to better display the data. All of our data is shown below: 

Our data shows that the forest is going through a substantial change due to succession. Since we were unable to survey the area directly due to time constraints, we are unsure as to why the forest is going through succession; some possibilities include forest fires or other types of natural disasters. My group is quite confident in our data given it was collected by professionals in the field and we were very careful when making our calculations. Through our data, we were able to conclude that trees such as Sweet Gum and Chestnut Oak have lived on this plot of land for an extended period of time given the high number of mature and overmature trees. Likewise, we were able to conclude that trees such as American Beech, Sugar Maple, and Red Maple are slowly making their way onto this plot of land given the high number of samplings and young trees. Our data suggests that high concentrations of trees such as Sweet Gum and Chestnut Oak inhabited this plot centuries ago. Our data also leads us to believe that high concentrations of trees such as American Beech, Sugar Maple, and Red Maple will inhabit this plot in the future.