Research Training ProgramSmithsonian
Institution
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| Allison N. Wack Randolph-Macon Woman's College Lynchburg, Virginia Stanwyn G. Shetler, Ph.D. "This program gave me the opportunity to test the waters in a field that may be my future - there can be no better experience than that." |
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A Century of Change in the Flora and Vegetation of an Urban Area Arlington County, Virginia
ABSTRACT
Arlington County, Virginia, comprises the western part of the diamond shape of Washington, D.C., separated from the District by the Potomac River. The land once belonged to the District of Columbia, but the portion that Fairfax County originally donated to the city was returned to Virginia in 1846. Over the past century, the county has been transformed from a rural area, full of farms and manorial estates, into an urban area that has managed to maintain only a small portion of its natural vegetation and habitats. The goal of this project was to determine the pattern of depletion of vegetation, as well as to track the change in the flora of the region through this urban onslaught. The D.C. Herbarium was used to find specimens collected from Arlington County in the late 1800's through 1915. The search was restricted by placing the criterion of an early summer blooming date on search specimens, as well as eliminating the grass and sedge families from the search because of the difficulty in their decisive field identification. There was then an attempt to document the existence of these species in the present time through field identifications and recent herbarium specimens from the D.C. and George Mason Herbaria. By examining maps of the county from several different time periods, the disappearance of natural vegetation was tracked. It was discovered that of the 25.7 square miles of land in the county, 1.8 square miles have been preserved in parkland. Part of this land, however, is used for recreational purposes such as baseball and soccer fields, and these areas provide little of the natural habitat once found in the area. In terms of the flora search, it was found that a good portion of the plants discovered in Arlington earlier in the century can still be found today, although the span of their habitat is much more restricted. Also, plants were identified which had not yet been documented in the county. This research is important in that it allows scientists to tentatively measure how much effect urbanization has had on the biodiversity of this area and from this scientists are able to draw conclusions about the fates of similar areas as urban development spreads.
This research was supported by Biology grant DBI-9531331 from the National Science Foundation.