Impacts of forest harvest on cold season land surface conditions and land‐atmosphere interactions in northern Great Lakes states

Abstract

Land cover change, including temporary disturbances such as forest harvests, can significantly affect established regimes of surface energy balance and moisture exchange, altering flux processes that drive weather and climate. We examined the impacts of forest harvest on winter land-atmosphere interactions in a temperate region using high-resolution numerical modeling methods in paired simulations. Using the WRF-ARW atmospheric model and the Noah land surface model, we simulated the balance of surface sensible and latent heat fluxes and the development and dissipation of a stable nocturnal boundary layer during generally calm synoptic conditions. Our results show reduced daily-average snow-covered land surface sensible heat flux (by 80%) and latent heat flux (by 60%) to the atmosphere in forest clearings due to albedo effects and rebalancing of the surface energy budget. We found a land surface cooling effect (28 W m 22 ) in snow-covered cleared areas, consistent with prior modeling studies and conceptual understanding of the mechanisms for midlatitude deforestation to offset anthropogenic global warming at local scales.Results also demonstrate impacts of forest clearing on the passage of a weak cold front due to altered nearsurface winds and boundary layer stability. We show significant differences in both surface conditions and fluxes between harvested and undisturbed forest areas. Our results demonstrate the potential utility of high-resolution remote sensing analyses to represent transient land cover changes in model simulations of weather and climate, which are usually undertaken at coarser resolutions and often overlook these changes at the land surface.

Climatology and Forest Phenology during 1984-2013 around Western Lake Superior, USA.

“…In Chapter 2 [Garcia et al 2014], I presented an idealized simulation using a coupled landatmosphere modeling system to investigate the differences in land surface conditions and heat fluxes between forested and harvested (clear-cut) areas under Winter conditions. Though this represents an extreme case of changed vegetation state-a stand-replacing forest disturbance, rather than the incremental changes over an undisturbed forest phenological cycle-it provides some guidance regarding model capabilities as well as the magnitudes of possible changes to surface fluxes that might be expected in further simulations under growing-season conditions.…”

“…In Chapter 2 [Garcia et al, 2014], I present an example of the way the land surface is often represented in meteorological models, demonstrating differences in model results at high resolution (100m grid spacing) when the underlying land cover is changed. This experiment depicts a categorical change in land cover type, but is intended to suggest possibilities for better representation of land cover (especially forests) by moving away from the categorical, bulk parameter representation to observationbased and more location-and climate-sensitive specifications of important land surface parameters.…”

Energy, water and carbon exchanges in managed forest ecosystems: description, sensitivity analysis and evaluation of the INRAE GO+ model, version 3.0

“…The wet and dry fractions of each canopy and soil layers are calculated dynamically using Gash's canopy water balance model resolved at an hourly time step (Eqs. S11-S14, Gash, 1979). This model, which needs few parameters, estimates the interception of incident rainfall by the canopy and the depth of water retained on the canopy.…”

“…Management affects the entire forest life cycle through many aspects such as the soil preparation, drainage, fertilization, tree stand species composition, age-class distribution, tree regeneration, thinning and harvest, control of diseases, pests and fires, and land-use changes. Many forest operations involved in modern forestry drastically change key canopy properties such as its albedo, roughness, leaf area index, standing biomass and number of stems per hectare (Garcia et al, 2014;Kuusinen et al, 2014;Otto et al, 2014). Important soil properties (heat and water storage capacities, cation exchange capacity, nutrient stocks) are also affected by forest operations that are common in managed forests (logging, soil preparation, drainage, fertilization, liming) with significant but controversial impacts on carbon dynamics (Stromgren et al, 2013;Achat et al, 2015;Jurevics et al, 2016;Erb et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2018).…”

Track-Monitoring and Analyzing Machine Clearances during Wood Forwarding

“…This effect was most notable at NWU where the snowpack was almost twice as deep than at the southern locations ( Figure A3-1). While snow compaction has no effect on frozen soil rutting, it has been shown to cause soils along the tracks to freeze deeper and longer, thereby delaying soil thawing along the established tracks (Grady, 1982;Garcia et al, 2015).…”