Is there a pattern to the 10% sword fern survival at Ground Zero?

In 2013, 215 large healthy sword ferns occupied the understory of the quarter-acre of Seward Park's Ground Zero.  Twenty of those ferns survive six years later. Is there a pattern to that survival, perhaps some clue to the cause of the die-off?  It appears that proximity to trees or logs correlates with survival - but does that stand up to close inspection?  We found that there is a small but statistically significant association.

In this map dead ferns are black circles, survivors are in light green, trees are larger solid circles, and logs are thick black lines.

Leo Shannon and I collected the location and status of all ferns, trees and logs in this quarter acre on May 18th and 19th, 2019.   Dylan Mendenhall did the analysis.   Results are summarized below the map.

Dylan's summary and suggestions:

The survival rate was 10.2% for sword ferns within 15 ft of a tree or log. In contrast, the survival rate was 2.3% for sword ferns further than 15 ft from a tree or log... the odds of a fern surviving are 4.8 times greater if it is located within 15 ft of a tree or log. 

Based on these findings, management recommendations are to:

• Maintain or increase coarse woody debris and mature trees in natural areas
  susceptible to sword fern die-offs
• Prioritize restoration planting within 10 ft of CWD or mature trees

All preliminary data, subsequent revisions, R scripts and figures are available on github .