Abstract Introduction The Wetlands Reserve Easement (WRE) program accounts for the majority of private land afforestation in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV), but consistent ecological monitoring is not often feasible after restoration activities are complete. Objectives We evaluated environmental factors influencing survival of trees planted during WRE bottomland afforestation and compared forest community composition among afforested WRE sites, pre‐existing forests on WRE sites, and nearby reference forests. Methods We measured survival of trees planted during afforestation activities and evaluated planted tree survival in relation to site and stand characteristics using a generalized linear mixed‐effects model (GLMM). We calculated the importance value of individual tree species to determine overall contribution to forest composition in each forest category. Using nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination and post‐hoc pairwise tests, we compared community composition among the three forest categories. Results Our community composition analysis indicated that afforested sites differed from both pre‐existing and reference forests. Planted tree survival was negatively associated with local overstory tree (>10 cm) density, understory tree (≤10 cm) density, and elevation relative to stream drainage and was lower in hydric as compared to non‐hydric soils. Conclusions Based on our results, greater survival of planted trees could most likely be achieved by thinning stands if natural regeneration is abundant, stratifying planted tree species by the most extreme expected hydrologic conditions, and restoring microtopography to simulate minor elevational changes characteristic of bottomland hardwood forests.
Hicks et al. (2026) studied this question.