Missouri stand:
The ~85-year-old MO stand (MO 85yo) (38° 44’ 38.76”, -92° 12’ 0”) was located in the University of Missouri’s Baskett Wildlife Research and Education Area. It is a comparitively xeric secondary oak-hickory forest, with dominant species of Q. alba ,Quercus velutina Lam., A. saccharum, Carya ovata (Mill.) K. Koch, and Juniperus virginiana L. (Wood et al ., 2018). While this site received similar annual precipitation to IN and NC_E, high precipitation variability and comparatively shallow silt loam soils imposed frequent and severe physiological drought (Gu et al. , 2015; Gu et al. , 2016).