Climate change is having profound effects on plant species across the world. Warming temperatures are causing species to migrate to cooler climates. This is especially seen in mountainous regions that have steep elevational gradients.

We used the R statistical environment to perform analysis. We calculated the density of all the mature and sapling samples. We calculated dominance and importance for all the mature samples.

For the five most abundant species we performed logistic regression analysis of species frequency against elevation. We used these regressions to determine the elevations at which a maximum, or threshold, frequency was reached. This depended on whether the species had a humped distribution such as sugar maple, or increased monotonically with elevation as for instance Fir did. The offset between the mature and sapling frequencies then indicated if, and how, the species were shifting their range.

Regression analysis results, shown in figure 5, and the elevational offsets shown in figure 6 show that only two species: striped and sugar maple are moving upslope like we expected. Red spruce actually appears to be moving downslope. Studies have shown red spruce to be expanding its range in response to lower levels of acid deposition. Beech was found at every elevation up until its range limit at 900 meters. There were also high numbers of saplings. These were most likely root suckers that grow as the result of adult trees infected with beech bark disease. The balsam fir did not show much movement because it’s range is in high elevations and we only sampled it at the bottom of it’s range. Therefore it did not have much room to move within our study.

In conclusion, our results indicate that some species are migrating due to climate change. However there are other factors involved. More data from other high peaks should be collected to determine if elevational shifts are consistent across the region.