Identifying Reference Conditions for Riparian Areas of Ohio

Special Circular 192

Abstract

Using pre-European settlement vegetation surveys and studies of the few remaining old-growth remnant forests, we:

• Determined the utility of using these different sources of information to develop reference conditions for riparian forests of Ohio.
• Identified gaps in our understanding of the ecology of Ohio's riparian forests that need to be addressed to help develop reference conditions for these important landscape components.

Based on an extensive review of the available literature, we surmised that while pre­European settlement maps and surveys provide generalized information on the broad forest types that once occurred across the state, they lack the site-specific information on forest stand structure and vegetation-environment relationships needed to adequately predict reference vegetative states.

The studies of the few remaining old-growth remnants do elucidate many of the finer-scale vegetation-environment relationships, providing considerable data on the overstory composition and, in some cases, ground-flora composition of these reference riparian systems. More information, however, is needed on the structure of these riparian forests in order to develop suites of ecologically based reference conditions for Ohio's riparian forests.