Sci-Comm: Holt Research Forest Small Mammal Stations Timber Inventory

Over 15,000 small mammals have been captured and recaptured at Holt Research Forest using live-trapping methods to investigate long-term wildlife dynamics. From 1983 to 2001, small mammal trapping was conducted twice yearly to estimate population lows and highs. This method worked well in documenting seasonal and annual population changes.

The Small Mammal Stations Timber Inventory is an inventory of environmental variables, such as tree, vegetation, and ground cover data, at the small mammal survey stations. This information can be used to relate tree-level habitat information to the collected small mammal data. For example, researchers can analyze how habitat characteristics influence small mammal populations and other metrics. Thus, a timber inventory was done at all transect line small mammal trap stations (Fig. 1). These variables may also be used to work with other datasets set up along the small mammal trapping stations, including the Annual Tree Seed Collection.

Figure 1. Layout of small mammal trapping locations.

Similar to the timber inventory procedure, all trees ≥ 9.5 cm DBH were measured and recorded by species, DBH class, and condition, while all regeneration trees ≥ 1.5 cm and <9.5 cm DBH were counted by species. Additionally, light levels were measured using a ceptometer, stump basal diameter was recorded, and vegetation coverage was estimated to characterize vegetation at each trap station. Coarse woody material, including logs, was also recorded by measuring diameter, length, species, and decomposition class. It is necessary to know that species and decomposition class were recorded as the species number first listed, followed by a decimal, and then the class using the HRF species codes and decomposition classes (e.g., 1.3 is a decomposition class 3 white pine log). This will be present in the datasets and may require additional data cleaning or formatting to work with the data correctly.

Five Small Mammal Stations Timber Inventory datasets are available for download as CSV files at the HRF data archive on the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative (FEMC) website (https://www.uvm.edu/femc/CI4/data/archive/project/smmatiminv), along with an additional dataset available upon request. Visit the Holt Research Forest data archive to learn more about our publicly available datasets and their metadata!