The main objective of this study was to determine if there were relationships between forest floor attributes such as the location of: (1) individual trees, (2) clusters of undergrowth vegetation, (3) coarse woody debris, (4) rocks and (5) topography and both soil characteristics and distribution patterns of ectomycorrhizal fungal mats. This data set includes mat, rock, wood, and moss distribution patterns (as presence or absence at each sampling node) as well as basic soil date taken at the same locations. The forest floor attributes were digitized using Esri ArcGIS. These GIS data layers are available as separate files in FSDB Database code SP029.
Robert P. Griffiths
We have long been interested in determining the extent to which plants and coarse woody debris (CWD) influenced forest soils. It has been speculated that plants impart changes in soils that effectively increase the resiliency of a stand to disturbance; this idea has been formalized in the concept of forest legacies (Perry et al., 1989). We have also been interested in factors influencing the distribution of ectomycorrhizal fungi. Earlier studies on 2 x 10 m plots showed not relationship between the distribution of rocks, trees and CWD and mat distribution patterns on the scale of a few meters. We wanted to determine if relationships between these features and mat distribution patterns could be detected at a larger scale. In this study we jumped from a 1 to at 5 m resolution. At this scale, the effects of large groupings of understory vegetation and large assemblages of CWD on mat distribution could be assessed. It also provided another opportunity to look at the role mats play in soil biogeochemical processes, supporting earlier studies (Griffiths et al., 1990, 91, 92; Aquiera and Griffiths, 1993).