Response of Plant and Araneae Communities to Forest Restoration on Reclaimed Mine Land

During post surface mining for coal in the 1940s-1960s in the Appalachian region, much of the land was returned to forest either through reclamation or through natural succession. While these forests successfully established in many places, even decades later the understories often lack native understory species, and instead are dominated by invasives. There is also anecdotal evidence of a lack of regeneration of the canopy tree species. This study was conducted to evaluate the success of restoration efforts focused on understory improvement on forested reclaimed mine land in Southeast Ohio specifically focusing on Araneae and plant populations. Three different treatments were studied: managed forest with invasive species removal, managed forest with invasive species removal and subsequent native plantings, and forest that was unmanaged as a control. The first growing season after treatments, Daubenmire vegetation surveys and Rapid Upland Forest Assessments (RUFAs) were used to observe plant percent cover, species richness, Shannon-Wiener diversity, and forest health metrics among treatments. Web misting and pitfall trapping were used to observe the number of Araneae species as well as overall abundance. Plant species richness and diversity was greatest in the managed forest plots where natives were planted, followed by the managed forest plots where only invasives were removed, and lowest in the unmanaged forest where no restoration work occurred. Native plant cover in the understory and RUFA scores, an indicator of forest health, did not significantly differ between the managed and unmanaged forest. Araneae abundance and species richness were greater in the unmanaged forest. Findings indicate that invasive species removal and native plantings can have a positive impact on vegetation communities within 6-12 months after implementation. However, continued monitoring is necessary to assess the long-term impacts of these restoration techniques on vegetation communities. Further research should be conducted on Araneae communities to observe how populations change over time and if understory structure has an effect on these communities.