<div>The accelerating expansion of agricultural and urban areas fragments and degrades forests</div><div>and their capacity to provide essential ecosystem services while increasing physiological stress</div><div>and mortality rates of trees growing near forest edges. Previous studies have documented that</div><div>edges are hotter and drier than forest interiors and trees nearer the edge grow slower. However,</div><div>the physical structure of a forest’s canopy may serve to mitigate to these effects. This study</div><div>quantifies forest fragmentation across the Central Hardwoods Region (CHR; containing Missouri,</div><div>Illinois, and Indiana) and characterizes structural differences between the canopies of forest edges</div><div>and forest interiors. Importantly, we distinguish between edges that neighbor developed land and</div><div>agricultural lands since these landcover types may impose distinct effects on forest structure. We</div><div>characterized forest canopy structure in a subset of the CHR region using the 2016-2020 Indiana</div><div>3DEP Lidar Program data. Our findings indicate edge forest (forests within 30m of an edge) makes</div><div>up 29.8% of the total forest in our study extent, with urban and agricultural edges accounting for</div><div>17.8% and 72.8% of the edge edges in the region, respectively. Analysis of 15 separate structural</div><div>metrics derived from aerial laser scanning (ALS) showed no significant structural differences</div><div>between developed and agricultural edge canopies but did find differences between structure of</div><div>canopies in forest cores and those in forest edges of any kind. As developed and agricultural lands</div><div>increase so too will forest fragmentation and the creation of new forest edges. If there are no</div><div>significant differences between forest edge types, then we could begin to treat edges without</div><div>distinction. This could lead to simplified management practices for foresters and urban foresters</div><div>alike to protect and preserve forest fragments.</div>