Vegetation community monitoring at Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial: 2011–2019

Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial celebrates the lives of the Lincoln family including the final resting place of Abraham’s mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Lincoln’s childhood in Indiana was a formative time in the life our 16th president. When the Lincoln family arrived in Indiana, the property was covered in the oak-hickory forest type. They cleared land to create their homestead and farm. Later, designers of the memorial felt that it was important to restore woodlands to the site. The woodlands would help visitors visualize the challenges the Lincoln family faced in establishing and maintaining their homestead. Some stands of woodland may have remained, but significant restoration efforts included extensive tree planting. The Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network began monitoring the woodland in 2011 with repeat visits every four years. These monitoring efforts provide a window into the composition and structure of the wood-lands. We measure both overstory trees and the ground flora within four permanently located plots. At these permanent plots, we record each species, foliar cover estimates of ground flora, diameter at breast height of midstory and overstory trees, and tree regeneration frequency (tree seedlings and saplings). The forest species composition was relatively consistent over the three monitoring events. Climatic conditions measured by the Palmer Drought Severity Index indicated mild to wet conditions over the monitoring record. Canopy closure continued to indicate a forest structure with a closed canopy. Large trees (>45 cm DBH) comprised the greatest amount of tree basal area. Sugar maple was observed to have the greatest basal area and density of the 23 tree species observed. The oaks characteristic of the early woodlands were present, but less dominant. Although one hickory species was present, it was in very low abundance. Of the 17 tree species recorded in the regeneration layer, three species were most abundant through time: sugar maple (Acer saccharum), red bud (Cercis canadensis), and ash (Fraxinus sp.). Ash recruitment seemed to increase over prior years and maple saplings transitioned to larger size classes. Ground flora diversity was similar through time, but alpha and gamma diversity were slightly greater in 2019. Percent cover by plant guild varied through time with native woody plants and forbs having the greatest abundance. Nonnative plants were also an important part of the ground flora composition. Common periwinkle (Vinca minor) and Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) continued to be the most abundant nonnative species, but these two species were less abundant in 2019 than 2011. Unvegetated ground cover was high (mean = 95%) and increased by 17% since 2011. Bare ground increased from less than 1% in 2011 to 9% in 2019, but other ground cover elements were similar to prior years. In 2019, we quantified observer error by double sampling two plots within three of the monitoring sites. We found total pseudoturnover to be about 29% (i.e., 29% of the species records differed between observers due to observer error). This 29% pseudoturnover rate was almost 50% greater than our goal of 20% pseudoturnover. The majority of the error was attributed to observers overlooking species. Plot frame relocation error likely contributed as well but we were unable to separate it from overlooking error with our design.