Southern Lowland Forests
Current Work
Data were taken in all field conditions
Ph.D. candidate Sarah E. Johnson, along with her brave field crew - Jonathan Bauer, Thomas Kleist, and Logan Peterman - have re-sampled the overstory and groundlayer at 50 sites originally sampled by the PEL group between 1949 and 1954. George Ware used these original data to write his 1955 thesis titled A pytosociological study of lowland hardwood forests in southern Wisconsin. Johnson and crew have also collected functional trait data for the most common lowland forest species. Sarah, with the assistance of Professor Donald Waller, is currently analyzing these data and writing up the results for publication. M.S. student Esther Alsum re-sampled five of Ware's original floodplain forest stands along the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway. Her thesis (Alsum 2003) and publication in The American Midland Naturalist (Hale, Alsum, Adams 2008) are listed on the publications page.
Our thanks to Sarah Johnson for her contribution of text and photos relating to southern lowland forests.
For more information on these communities please also refer to the following websites;
- WI DNR webpage on Southern Forests
- UW Madison's Virginia Kline Image Library