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Data from: Assessing forest structural diversity on lakeshores via aerial LiDAR: Influence of environmental conditions and species composition on structural diversity patterns

Parent, Michael1; Cox, Alexander1; Swenson, Nathan1

Published Aug 05, 2026 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.2bvq83c63

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Aug 05, 2026 version files 2.48 MB

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Abstract

Forests vary in their compositional and structural diversity along natural gradients. In northern temperate forests, freshwater lakes create a natural edge effect by producing abiotic gradients in moisture, light, and nutrients. These abiotic gradients are prime factors to create steep gradients in forest composition and structure with distance from the shore. Variation in forest composition and structure can then influence the ecosystem services forests provide and the overall biodiversity of the system. One of the greatest pressures on temperate forests within areas that have a high density of lakes is human development of the lakeshores. Thus, quantifying how forest compositional and structural diversity is related to distance from the lakeshore is of fundamental importance, but it has been difficult to quantify on broad spatial extents. Here, we integrate field-based measurements of forest composition and environmental conditions with airborne LiDAR data in the Northwoods region of the United States to quantify the impact of spatial and environmental factors on forest structural diversity. We report rapid changes in forest structural diversity over the first 40 m from the shoreline and identify the underlying abiotic and biotic factors such as the topographic wetness index, Shannon diversity, and mean stand age that influence forest structural diversity using statistical models with structural diversity calculated via aerial LiDAR. The results of this study elucidate the importance of lakeshores for contributing to overall ecosystem diversity in the region and provide a scalable approach for rapidly quantifying forest structural diversity in proximity to lakeshores via aerial LiDAR.