Ecological and Floristic Plant Surveys of Little Wabash River Nature Preserve, Indiana

Abstract

Forests in northeastern Indiana are relegated to relatively small fragments and have become important patches in a landscape dominated by agriculture. Little Wabash River Nature Preserve is a property in Allen County, Indiana, closed to the public and protected by ACRES Land Trust. We conducted ecological surveys at 48 regular plots located along seven transects through the property that consisted of identifying and counting individual plants at understory, midstory, and overstory strata and recording several ecological factors. These were augmented by floristic meandering surveys during the growing season of 2019 to record plant species that may not have been encountered at the ecological plots and thereby give a fuller picture of the floristic composition of the property. We encountered a total of 251 identified species during the ecological and floristic surveys. Analysis showed understory abundance, richness, and diversity were positively related to available light (photosynthetically active radiation) and negatively related to canopy cover. The most abundant species in the midstory were non-native species. Juglans nigra had the greatest frequency and dominance in the overstory. In nonmetric multidimensional scaling, there was clear separation of the plant community within the forested portion from the community in the adjacent to the small old-field. Mean C-value for the site was 2.87, which resulted in a 41.56 FQI. The FQI may be an over-estimation of the conservation importance of the site and the Mean C-value may be an under-estimation of that importance. Overall, the Nature Preserve provides an example of the plant diversity can exist in a small, protected forest. While there are some common non-native species, there is habitat for a relatively large pool of species and may be of importance for protection within the surrounding disturbed landscape.