2022 Symposium for Student Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Continued anthropogenic activities alter ecosystem composition, connectivity, and function. In western Pennsylvania, regenerating forest ecosystems health and diversity can decline due to this activity. Plant communities within the forest can reflect past and current stressors, particularly the mosses. As a highly specific relatively quick establishing community component, log-fall mosses can be used as a convenient indicator to better understand the impacts of human activities on western Pennsylvania's forests. This is due to log-fall mosses requiring specific habitat requirements, difficulty dispersing horizontally to different forest patches, intense negative reactions to stresses in the environment, and lacking non-native species. These communities can be assessed, correlated to surrounding vascular plants, and genotyped. The results of this study will allow for rapid assessment of the health and diversity of Western Pennsylvanian forests and stressors impacting these systems.