• Birch, Stacy Jo
  University of Maine Graduate School
  

Old-growth forests, although rare, exhibit a unique set of qualities and provide us with a benchmark to which biological change, environmental change, and harvesting impacts can be compared. Old-growth in Maine's Canadian forest affords us the opportunity to study unique assemblages of species and community types reflecting its location between the boreal forests of the north and the temperate northern hardwoods to the south and west. The information obtained from this study should be useful for forest managers looking for quantitative data for future biodiversity conservation efforts and to inform developing ecology-based silvicultural systems.

In the first part of this study we identified multiple forest community types (Including mixed wood forest, cedar swamps, cedar seepage forest, northern hardwood forest, red spruce-mixed wood forest, spruce forest, hemlock-mixed wood forest, and hemlock forest) in the Boody Brook Natural area (BBNA) of northern Piscataquis County, Maine. To date, nom other studies have synthesized multiple types of information regarding the "old-growthness" of this reserve. The community types were composed of shade tolerant species in the overstory, regeneration similar to overstory composition, abundant coarse woody material, trees of large diameters (>60cm dbh), a reverse J-shaped diameter distribution, and shade tolerant gap fillers. Values reported in the reserve were comparable to the nearby Big Reed Forest Reserve although tree maximum size was larger in the BBNA due to differences in site quality and the abundance of large eastern hemlock which is lacking at Big Reed.