Southern New England and Long Island Witness Tree Data
HF087 Overview Data EML Archive- Investigators: Matthias Burgi, John Burk, Charles Cogbill, Brian Hall, Erin Largay, Glenn Motzkin
- Contact: Glenn Motzkin
- Start date: 1640-01-01
- End date: 1999-12-31
- Location: Southern New England and Long Island
- Latitude: +40.5 to +42.9
- Longitude: -73.8 to -69.9
- Elevation:
- Taxa:
- Keywords: GIS, history, land use, landscape patterns
- Release date: 2003
- EML version: knb-lter-hfr.87.2
- Revisions:
- Abstract:
Early surveyors' witness-tree records from initial land divisions are often used to reconstruct the vegetation at the time of European settlement and before extensive Euro-American land use. The following description of methods comes from the published paper (Hall, B., G .Motzkin, D. R. Foster, M. Syfert and J. Burk. 2002. Three hundred years of forest and land-use change in Massachusetts, USA. Journal of Biogeography 29, 1319-1335):
"Following methods described more fully in Cogbill et al. (2002), we used early surveyors' tree records from initial land divisions in each town to reconstruct the vegetation at the time of European settlement and before extensive Euro-American land use. All available original 17th - early 19th century survey records located at the state archives and individual town halls were examined and colloquial or common names of marker trees were noted... With few exceptions, only surveys that occurred within 80 years of town settlement were gathered in order to limit the potential influence of European land use on species composition."
- Methods:
- Use:
This dataset is released to the public and may be freely downloaded. Please keep the designated Contact person informed of any plans to use the dataset. Consultation or collaboration with the original investigators is strongly encouraged. Publications and data products that make use of the dataset must include proper acknowledgement. For more information on LTER Network data access and use policies, please see: http://www.lternet.edu/data/netpolicy.html.
- Related datasets: HF014 HF088