DOI: 10.5061/dryad.w0vt4b90z
title: Understory vegetation response to post-tornado salvage logging

description: In an era of increasing natural disturbances, successful tree regeneration
 has grown more difficult to achieve. Disturbance notably alters forest
 microclimates, creating open canopy conditions that might promote growth
 of undesirable understory communities adept at outcompeting tree
 seedlings. Salvage logging, a common management response to disturbance,
 may further impede regeneration success. In 2013, a rare tornado in
 northcentral Maine, USA, and subsequent salvage operation created three
 clear ‘treatments’ for evaluation of post-disturbance understory
 regeneration: blowdown, blowdown followed by salvage logging and an
 undisturbed control. Ten years post tornado, we inventoried understory
 vegetation within each of these treatments. We used hemispherical
 photographs to characterize canopy openness and installed sensors to track
 temperature and soil moisture throughout a growing season. Results
 indicate distinct understory community differences among each of the
 treatments, with the salvage treatment supporting a higher richness and
 abundance of early successional, shade intolerant taxa, while the blowdown
 and control treatments were characterized by later successional, shade
 tolerant taxa. Abundance of conifer regeneration was notably lower in
 plots with high abundance of Rubus idaeus or Pteridium aquilinum.
 Ordination results suggest that canopy openness and surface temperature
 fluctuations were the primary factors associated with these compositional
 differences. This study furthers our understanding of the interactions
 among disturbance, microclimate, and understory communities, highlighting
 the need for increased consideration of long-term effects following
 salvage logging.
description: # Understory vegetation response to post-salvage logging
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.w0vt4b90z](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.w0vt4b90z) This dataset contains the understory vegetation cover, coarse woody material (CWM), sapling data, fisheye photograph and TMS probe data analyzed for a manuscript in progress. Details on methods and codes are located in the metadata sheets of the dataset. Additional details about the methodology can be found in the manuscript. ## Description of the data and file structure Data are sorted among five sheets: understory vegetation, CWM, saplings, fisheye photos, and TMS. The understory vegetation data sheet lists the treatment, plot, subplot, species, percent cover and month of inventory. The CWM data sheet lists the treatment, plot, transect direction, species (if known), diameter (taken using calipers), height (to midpoint), and decay class (five-class scale). The sapling data sheet lists treatment, plot, transect direction, species, browse (presence/absence), sapling diameter size class and total (sum of size class rows). The fisheye photos data sheet lists the plot and percent canopy openness assessed for each photo using the Gap Light Analyzer software (camera details and photo date listed on sheet). The TMS data sheet provides the date and time, probe ID (three per plot), treatment, atzimuth (location of probe), plot, soil temperature, surface temperature, air temperature and day of year and volumetric soil moisture. Species codes are provided on separate sheets and metadata tabs provide additional details. ## Sharing/Access information Contact the corresponding author for additional details about use of this dataset. ## Code/Software These data were analyzed in R, code avaliable upon request from the corresponding author.