Paper about Forest Resilency on the Domain Accepted for Publication

Our paper, "Differential resistance to tree species loss between two dominant communities in a resilient southeastern landscape" has been accepted for publication in Natural Areas Journal. Lab alumni, Leighton Reid (C'06) and Callie Oldfield (C'15) were co-authors. The concept of resiliency is commonly used by both land managers and ecologists when referring to the ability of landscapes to retain biodiversity over time. Since landscapes are often composed of multiple, juxtaposed communities, it is possible that resiliency may vary considerably within a given landscape. Our paper examined this question using long-term vegetation plot data from two adjacent forest communities at Dick Cove , a U.S. National Park Service recognized National Natural Landmark on the University of the South Domain. The Cumberland Plateau landscape has been designated by the Nature Conservancy and the Open Space Institute as being highly resilient. By operationalizing the concept of resiliency using long-term data, we showed that the two major forest types associated with the Cumberland Plateau landscape differed in their ability to retain woody plant species over time. Our results highlighted the need for land managers to consider community level variation in resiliency when addressing biodiversity conservation at the landscape level. This paper was a follow-up study to a paper that Leighton and I published in 2008.