Journal of Emerging Scholarship

Invasive plants in Maryland’s Corcoran Woods Environmental Study Area have been outcompeting native vegetation for many years. This mature hardwood forest provides refuge for many species, but plants like Microstegium vimineum (Japanese stiltgrass) and Rubus phoenicolasius (wineberry) are threatening native populations. In 2015, nine sets of test plots in three different sampling areas were established in which chemical and physical removal methods were used to control invasive species. One of the plot areas was re-treated in summer of 2024 to see the impact of further treatment. Our study focused on analyzing the regrowth of invasive and native species to determine if management efforts were successful. In October of 2024, we sampled each set of plots, recording diameter breast height (DBH) of trees and percent cover of understory species. Comparing our findings to those from 2021, we determined that the project was marginally successful. There was a small overall increase in native plant cover in all but one of the treated plot areas, with the most native recovery in the re-treated plot. However, invasives were still dominant with an 80–90% cover in each area. To fully understand how forests respond to invasive removal and determine the project’s long-term effectiveness, we’ll need to continue this project for the next several years.