Managing for late-successional/old-growth characteristics in northern hardwood-conifer forests

Keeton, William S.

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2006.08.005

Cited by 190 publications

(200 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Thus, an alternative is to promote greater structural complexity (e.g. vertically differentiated canopies, higher volumes of coarse woody debris) in actively managed stands (Hunter 1999;Keeton 2006), which may benefit those organisms not well represented in simplified stands, as long as sufficient habitat is provided across multiple stands to support viable populations. The second principle, maintenance of connectivity, allows organisms to disperse, access resources, and interact demographically.…”

Section: Managing the Matrixmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The objective is to develop silvicultural systems that provide a broader range of stand development stages, including old-growth forest habitats and associated functions Keeton 2006). These systems accelerate rates of stand development in young, mature, and riparian forests through underplanting, variable density thinning, crown release, and other methods (Singer and Lorimer 1997;Harrington et al 2005).…”

Section: Emulating Natural Disturbancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…17.2 bottom right). These relate both to the limited time over which secondary forest development has occurred, through predominately old-field succession, and forest management practices which tend to set back or hold in check late-successional stand development processes (Keeton 2006). The relative abundance of dominant tree species and their landscape position have also shifted as a result of land use history (Cogbill et al 2002).…”

Section: Northern Hardwood Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Harvey et al 2002;Seymour 2005;Keeton 2006;Seymour et al 2006). These share a number of concepts that may have broader relevance outside the region.…”

Section: Northern Hardwood Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet in the northern hardwood region there are questions regarding whether landscape scale age class distributions should be shifted closer to that associated with natural disturbance regimes (Lorimer and White 2003;Keeton 2006). Given the current over abundance of young to mature stands, an artifact of land-use history, this would require a greater emphasis on management for late-successional forest characteristics.…”

Section: Northern Hardwood Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emulating Natural Disturbance Regimes: an Emerging Approach for Sustainable Forest Management

North

Keeton²

Patterns and Processes in Forest Landscapes

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Sustainable forest management integrates ecological, social, and economic objectives. To achieve the former, researchers and practitioners are modifying silvicultural practices based on concepts from successional and landscape ecology to provide a broader array of ecosystem functions than is associated with conventional approaches. One such innovation is disturbance-based management. Under this approach, forest practices that emulate natural ecological processes, such as local disturbance regimes, are viewed as more likely to perpetuate the evolutionary environment and ecosystem functions of the forest matrix. We examine how this concept has been applied in three U.S. forest types: Pacific Northwest temperate coniferous, Western mixed-conifer, and Northeastern northern hardwood forests. In general, stand-level treatments have been widely used and often closely mimic historic disturbance because forest structure and composition guidelines have been well defined from reconstructive research. Disturbance-based landscape management, however, has not yet been closely approximated in the three forest types we examined. Landscape implementation has been constrained by economic, ownership, safety, and practical limitations. Given these constraints we suggest that disturbancebased management concepts are best applied as an assessment tool with variable implementation potential. Silviculture practices can be compared against the frequency, scale, and level of biological legacies characteristic of natural disturbance regimes to evaluate their potential impact on ecosystem sustainability.

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Section: Managing the Matrixmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Emulating Natural Disturbancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Northern Hardwood Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Harvey et al 2002;Seymour 2005;Keeton 2006;Seymour et al 2006). These share a number of concepts that may have broader relevance outside the region.…”

Section: Northern Hardwood Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Northern Hardwood Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Emulating Natural Disturbance Regimes: an Emerging Approach for Sustainable Forest Management

North

Keeton²

Patterns and Processes in Forest Landscapes

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Intermediate‐severity wind disturbance in mature temperate forests: legacy structure, carbon storage, and stand dynamics

Meigs

Keeton

2018

Ecological Applications

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Wind is one of the most important natural disturbances influencing forest structure, ecosystem function, and successional processes worldwide. This study quantifies the stand-scale effects of intermediate-severity windstorms (i.e., blowdowns) on (1) live and dead legacy structure, (2) aboveground carbon storage, and (3) tree regeneration and associated stand dynamics at four mature, mixed hardwood-conifer forest sites in the northeastern United States. We compare wind-affected forests to adjacent reference conditions (i.e., undisturbed portions of the same stands) 0-8 yr post-blowdown using parametric (ANOVA) and nonparametric (NMS ordination) analyses. We supplement inventory plots and downed coarse woody detritus (DCWD) transects with hemispherical photography to capture spatial variation in the light environment. Although recent blowdowns transferred a substantial proportion of live overstory trees to DCWD, residual live tree basal area was high (19-59% of reference areas). On average, the initial post-blowdown ratio of DCWD carbon to standing live tree carbon was 2.72 in blowdown stands and 0.18 in reference stands, indicating a large carbon transfer from live to dead pools. Despite these dramatic changes, structural complexity remained high in blowdown areas, as indicated by the size and species distributions of overstory trees, abundance of sound and rotten downed wood, spatial patterns of light availability, and variability of understory vegetation. Furthermore, tree species composition was similar between blowdown and reference areas at each site, with generally shade-tolerant species dominating across multiple canopy strata. Community response to intermediate-severity blowdown at these sites suggests a dynamic in which disturbance maintains late-successional species composition rather than providing a regeneration opportunity for shade-intolerant, pioneer species. Our findings suggest that intermediate-severity wind disturbances can contribute to stand-scale structural complexity as well as development toward late-successional species composition, at least when shade-tolerant regeneration is present pre-blowdown. Advance regeneration thus enhances structural and compositional resilience to this type of disturbance. This study provides a baseline for multi-cohort silvicultural systems designed to restore heterogeneity associated with natural disturbance dynamics.

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Enhancing structural complexity: An experiment conducted in the Black Forest National Park, Germany

Asbeck

Benneter

Huber

et al. 2023

Ecology and Evolution

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We report on a structural complexity enhancement (SCE) experiment that was designed to test ecological restoration measures in the Black Forest National Park, Germany. The main goal was to understand as to whether the creation of standing and downed deadwood within previously managed, single‐layered Norway spruce ( Picea abies L.) forests accelerates the development of forest structure, richness, and diversity of a range of taxonomic groups. Here we introduce the experimental design and describe the development of stand structure including abundance and richness of tree‐related microhabitats (TreMs) within 5 years after initiation of the experiment in October 2016. To enhance structural complexity in treatment plots, 10 trees per plot were toppled using a skidder winch, and another 10 trees were ring barked at a height of around 60 cm above ground level with a chainsaw. To monitor stand structure, we collected data on common forest attributes such as diameter at breast height (DBH), tree height, and TreMs of all trees in the six experimental and six control plots measuring 0.25 ha in size before the treatments were carried out in 2016 and again in 2020/21. We analyzed the abundance and richness of TreMs using generalized linear mixed models with DBH and treatment vs. control as predictors. The SCE treatment resulted in a significant increase in deadwood volumes (4.2 vs. 439.5 m 3 ) as well as in TreM abundance and richness (increase of 0.74 TreMs per tree). This indicates that the SCE treatment was effective to increase biodiversity‐relevant structures such as deadwood and TreMs, in previously managed Norway spruce‐dominated stands. The ongoing monitoring of a range of taxonomic groups (birds, bats, small mammals, coleoptera, fungi, mosses, and vascular plants) in this experiment will demonstrate to what extent the enhancement in structural complexity will lead to an enrichment in species richness and diversity.

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Managing for late-successional/old-growth characteristics in northern hardwood-conifer forests

Cited by 190 publications

References 47 publications

Emulating Natural Disturbance Regimes: an Emerging Approach for Sustainable Forest Management

Emulating Natural Disturbance Regimes: an Emerging Approach for Sustainable Forest Management

Intermediate‐severity wind disturbance in mature temperate forests: legacy structure, carbon storage, and stand dynamics

Enhancing structural complexity: An experiment conducted in the Black Forest National Park, Germany

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