Global change is altering both the frequency and severity of disturbances in forest ecosystems. Under historical disturbance regimes, the interval between disturbances has allowed forests to return to a stable state and persist. However, changes to these regimes leaves the future of forest ecosystems uncertain. How forests respond to and recover from disturbance is a largely unanswered question in ecology, and a critical investigation for the management and conservation of northern temperate ecosystems. This study will investigate the response of plant communities and ecosystem processes to a long-term disturbance regime manipulation in two parts. The first part is a greenhouse experiment investigating the following question: how does soil disturbance legacy influence seedling allocation to above and belowground growth? To investigate this, we experimentally grew Quercus rubra, a dominant tree species in northern temperate forests, in soils collected from each disturbance treatment. We predicted that seedling growth allocation to above and belowground biomass would vary across disturbance treatments based on resource availability in soils with varying disturbance legacies (data analysis in progress). In the second part of our study, we will conduct a field survey during the summer field season to understand community composition, functional diversity, and ecosystem function across disturbance treatments. Our results will help answer the following questions: 1) how does disturbance regime influence understory composition and functional diversity, and 2) how do ecosystem processes such as productivity and decomposition vary based on historical disturbance regime? The combination of this two-part greenhouse and field study will give us insight into the response to northern temperate ecosystems to varying disturbance regimes. Results from our greenhouse experiment and field survey will provide useful data for informed management of northern temperate forests under increasing instability expected with global change.