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The Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment (HEE) in Indiana is a long-term, large-scale experimental study of forest management and its impacts on plants and animals. Information from the HEE should and will be made available to a diverse group of potential users. This paper summarizes educational efforts during the pre-treatment period and highlights potential mechanisms and considerations for future efforts.

Disturbance plays an important role in forest development processes. Present-day forest condition can be viewed as the cumulative result of various historical disturbance events; therefore, an understanding of disturbance history is important when describing overall forest condition. Pre-treatment studies of the Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment (HEE) have described various ecological and social aspects of portions of two State Forests in south-central Indiana that serve as the study area for the HEE. This paper describes the timber harvesting history for the HEE study area and how this...

Terrestrial salamanders are ideal indicators of forest ecosystem integrity due to their abundance, their role in nutrient cycling, and their sensitivity to environmental change. To understand better how terrestrial salamanders are affected by forest management practices, we monitored species diversity and abundance before implementation of timber harvests within the forested landscape of the Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment in Indiana. We monitored 66 cover-object grids in fall 2007 and spring 2008 and conducted quadrat surveys at each grid in spring 2008. Cover-object sampling and quadrat...

The Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment (HEE) is a 100-year, replicated experiment implemented in south-central Indiana to examine the impacts of multiple timber management regimes on forest ecosystems. A secondary objective of the HEE is to evaluate responses of small mammal assemblages. We trapped at 32 sites prior to silvicultural treatments to assess pre-treatment small mammal communities. Trapping at all sites in both years allowed for modeling of multi-season occupancy and relative abundance using environmental covariates while incorporating imperfect detection. Estimated occupancy...

As part of the Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment we measured mast production in white (Quercus alba) and black (Q. velutina) oak, and quantified the impacts of seed predators on acorn survival over a 3-year period. Specifically, we measured the proportion of acorns of each species infested with weevils (Curculio spp.), and the probability of acorn removal by seed predators from a system of semipermeable exclosures. The 3 years of the study included 2 years of high mast production in both species (2006-07) and 1 year of mast crop failure (2008). Across all 3 years, 19 percent of acorns were...

This guide updates and supersedes Agriculture Handbook No. 718, Forest Landowners’ Guide to the Federal Income Tax, incorporating new tax legislation that was passed and administrative changes promulgated through September 30, 2012. It introduces tax planning and basic tax considerations and explains the Federal income tax as it pertains to timber and forest land, including basis and capital accounts, reforestation tax incentives, depreciation and the Internal Revenue Code section 179 deduction, operating expenses and carrying charges, the passive loss rules, sale or disposal of timber,...

Before experimental harvest of the Yellowwood (YW) and Morgan-Monroe (MM) State Forests (Indiana) as part of the Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment, bats were sampled using mist nets at four locations in MM and five locations in YW during each summer 2006 through 2008. Netting locations were adjacent to forest stands scheduled for experimental manipulations following conclusion of netting in 2008. This effort produced 342 bats (in order of abundance): northern myotis (Myotis septentrionalis), eastern red bat (Lasiurus borealis), big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus), Indiana myotis (M. sodalis),...

As part of a study examining the effects of silvicultural treatments for oak regeneration on habitat use by bats, we surveyed forest stands prior to the implementation of treatments in two state forests in Indiana. Interior forest sites corresponding to areas designated for silvicultural treatments were surveyed for 2 nights each during the summers of 2007 and 2008. Additionally, three types of existing forest openings (pre-existing harvest openings, forest edges, and open corridors) were surveyed during 2007 in the same area. We assessed bat habitat use by recording echolocation calls...

Longhorned beetles are a diverse and important group of insects in forest ecosystems; several species attack weakened or stressed trees, relatively few attack healthy trees, and most species use only dead and decomposing wood. We surveyed longhorned beetles and metallic wood-boring beetles using four different types of traps at 36 Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment (Indiana) locations that spanned all silvicultural treatments from 2006 through 2008. During two of these pre-treatment years we conducted surveys on sites destined to be within treatment areas, and in one year we sampled within the...

The response of forest insect communities to disturbances such as timber harvest likely will depend on the underlying ecological assembly rules that affect community structure. Two competing hypotheses are niche assembly, which seeks to demonstrate significant species-environment correlations, and dispersal-assembly, which seeks to demonstrate spatial autocorrelation in the absence of species-environment correlations. Unfortunately, many studies of forest management never explicitly test what factors are responsible for maintaining community structure prior to harvest. The goal of this...