Determination of Alterations in Forest Condition Using Various Measures of Land Use Change along an Urban-Rural Gradient in the West Georgia Piedmont, USA

Table 2

Standard ANOVA values and means (±SE) for forest stand structure variables collected in “West Georgia”¹.

Standard ANOVA				Tukey-Kramer HSD comparisons
Variable	Mean square	Prob > F	Urban; (𝑛=4)		Developing; (𝑛=4)		Rural; (𝑛=4)
Total number of trees >10 cm dbh ha	19048	0.37	391.67±75.69		523.33±42.60		493.33±72.75
Total number of hardwoods /ha	29448	0.04	265.00±56.53	(a)	430.00±33.17	(b)	388.33±15.96	(a, b)
Total number of pines /ha	6100	0.51	126.67±23.73		63.58±27.63		135.00±70.52
Hardwood : Pine ratio	7578	0.28	2.90±0.26		89.59±52.28		53.12±33.40
Total number of tree species	11.19	0.04	4.67±0.54	(a)	8.00±1.03	(b)	6.58±0.58	(a, b)
Mean dbh (cm) of all mature trees	77.78	0.07	31.33±3.00		23.25±1.29		24.22±2.21
Basal Area (m^2/ha)	35.68	0.41	36.09±3.29		30.12±3.85		32.86±1.27
Median age of stand	87.74	0.36	45.81±4.39		40.71±4.15		50.06±4.49
% Peak canopy cover	135.83	0.15	82.28±6.02		91.00±2.16		93.33±1.16
Mean upper canopy height (m)	2.31	0.92	26.53±2.05		25.27±3.47		25.16±2.13
Mean subcanopy height (m)	7.46	0.44	18.46±1.70		16.56±1.45		15.82±1.07
Total number of trees 2.5–l0cm dbh	415969	0.14	244.17±161.80		875.00±281.60		675.83±148.92
Mean number of saplings 0.635–2.5cm	595.47	0.41	30.56±16.76		31.67±12.62		52.22±4.30
Mean number of seedlings <0.635cm	4.84	0.47	1.80±0.85		3.33±0.98		3.93±1.64
% Woody stems/ha	0.11	0.56	0.40±0.18		0.64±0.23		0.71±0.20
% Herbaceous plants/ha	124.92	0.29	16.38±5.78		6.15±1.94		7.38±5.36
% Leaf litter/ha	34.01	0.77	88.83±6.01		90.17±7.10		94.42±3.07
% Bare ground/ha	33.54	0.58	3.79±2.97		7.92±5.82		2.33±1.01

¹SE = standard error of the mean; 𝑛 = number of study sites sampled; Mean values in a row with different letters are significantly different (𝑃<.05) based on Tukey-adjusted least squares means.