Linking past land use, recent disturbance, and dispersal mechanism to forest composition

Many areas in north-eastern North America were historically cleared for agriculture and subsequently abandoned. The resulting woodlots are exposed to varying degrees of recent disturbance. This paper examines the contributions of land use history and recent disturbance on the species richness and community composition of wooded areas in an agricultural landscape. Woodlots were categorized according to land clearance history, past grazing, and recent disturbance, such as the presence of roads or selective cutting. Vegetation surveys resulted in the identification of 250 herbaceous plant species, 44 of which were classified as exotic. While no influence of recent disturbance on community composition was detected, past land use influenced species richness for all plant groups examined. General linear models indicated that herbaceous, native, and forest species richness was highest in historically partially cleared sites; while exotic and invasive species richness was greatest in historically cleared sites. Non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (NMS) ordination was used to identify associations between community assemblage, land use history, and dispersal mechanism. The two axes of the NMS ordination explained 79.2% of the variation in the data, and indicated that woodlots completely cleared in the past were associated with wind dispersed species indicative of disturbed habitats. In contrast, historically uncleared sites contained short-distance dispersed species indicative of rich woods. Although no effects of recent disturbance were detected, the long lived impacts of past land use and the increase of exotic and invasive species in historically cleared indicate that undisturbed woodlots should be considered of highest conservation importance.