Range of Variability in Southern Coastal Plain Forests: Its Historical, Contemporary, and Future Role in Sustaining Biodiversity

Mitchell, Robert J.; Duncan, Sally.

doi:10.5751/es-02562-140117

Cited by 29 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Our regional model further quantifies 4 vs. 5 fires since 1991 and ∼10 m 2 /ha as breakpoints between degraded classes related to burning and tree basal area, respectively. These results reinforce the importance of frequent prescribed fires for management of longleaf pine woodlands [8], [13], because of its positive influence on understory plant communities [15], [17]. Our results further highlight the role of agricultural legacies in the degradation of longleaf pine plant communities [14]–[16].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Land-Use History and Contemporary Management Inform an Ecological Reference Model for Longleaf Pine Woodland Understory Plant Communities

et al. 2014

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Ecological restoration is frequently guided by reference conditions describing a successfully restored ecosystem; however, the causes and magnitude of ecosystem degradation vary, making simple knowledge of reference conditions insufficient for prioritizing and guiding restoration. Ecological reference models provide further guidance by quantifying reference conditions, as well as conditions at degraded states that deviate from reference conditions. Many reference models remain qualitative, however, limiting their utility. We quantified and evaluated a reference model for southeastern U.S. longleaf pine woodland understory plant communities. We used regression trees to classify 232 longleaf pine woodland sites at three locations along the Atlantic coastal plain based on relationships between understory plant community composition, soils (which broadly structure these communities), and factors associated with understory degradation, including fire frequency, agricultural history, and tree basal area. To understand the spatial generality of this model, we classified all sites together and for each of three study locations separately. Both the regional and location-specific models produced quantifiable degradation gradients–i.e., progressive deviation from conditions at 38 reference sites, based on understory species composition, diversity and total cover, litter depth, and other attributes. Regionally, fire suppression was the most important degrading factor, followed by agricultural history, but at individual locations, agricultural history or tree basal area was most important. At one location, the influence of a degrading factor depended on soil attributes. We suggest that our regional model can help prioritize longleaf pine woodland restoration across our study region; however, due to substantial landscape-to-landscape variation, local management decisions should take into account additional factors (e.g., soil attributes). Our study demonstrates the utility of quantifying degraded states and provides a series of hypotheses for future experimental restoration work. More broadly, our work provides a framework for developing and evaluating reference models that incorporate multiple, interactive anthropogenic drivers of ecosystem degradation.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

Land-Use History and Contemporary Management Inform an Ecological Reference Model for Longleaf Pine Woodland Understory Plant Communities

et al. 2014

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“…Many studies have generally reported an increase in streamflow in the US during the latter half of the 20th century in both gradual and sudden (step) changes (McCabe and Wolock, 2002). Between 1948 and1988, regions across the US experienced varied changes in land use, including urbanization, deforestation and vegetation clearance (southern US), forest and vegetation regrowth (southern and eastern US), and expanding agricultural cover (midwestern US) (Woodbury et al, 2006;Allan, 2004;Garbrecht et al, 2004;Drummond and Loveland, 2010;Mitchell and Duncan, 2009). These changes have altered catchment behavior by impacting the primary hydrologic functions of partitioning, storage and release of water.…”

Section: Signature Values During the Four Decadesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing hydrologic change through catchment classification

Sawicz

Kelleher

Wagener

et al. 2014

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. There has been an intensive search in recent years for suitable strategies to organize and classify the very heterogeneous group of catchments that characterize our landscape. One strand of this work has focused on testing the value of hydrological signatures derived from widely available hydro-meteorological observations for this catchment classification effort. Here we extend this effort by organizing 314 catchments across the contiguous US into 12 distinct clusters using six signature characteristics for a baseline decade (1948–1958, period 1). We subsequently develop a regression tree and utilize it to classify these catchments for three subsequent decades (periods 2–4). This analysis allows us to assess the movement of catchments between clusters over time, and therefore to assess whether their hydrologic similarity/dissimilarity changes. We find examples in which catchments initially assigned to a single class diverge into multiple classes (e.g., midwestern catchments between periods 1 and 2), but also cases where catchments from different classes would converge into a single class (e.g., midwestern catchments between periods 2 and 3). We attempt to interpret the observed changes for causes of this temporal variability in hydrologic behavior. Generally, the changes in both directions were most strongly controlled by changes in the water balance of catchments characterized by an aridity index close to one. Changes to climate characteristics of catchments – mean annual precipitation, length of cold season or the seasonality of precipitation throughout the year – seem to explain most of the observed class transitions between slightly water-limited and slightly energy-limited states. Inadequate temporal information on other time-varying aspects, such as land use change, limits our ability to further disentangle causes for change.

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“…Thus, our regional and location-specific reference models may be mapped at large spatial scales to assist management and conservation decisions. Longleaf pine understory communities are notable for high levels of species diversity from local (e.g., 1×1m) to regional scales (Peet 2006, Mitchell 2009. Our findings provide guidance over much of this range in scales, spanning sites, landscapes, and portions of a region (the Atlantic Coastal Plain).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 63%

“…Fire-maintained longleaf pine savannas support species-diverse understory plant communities that have been widely degraded by human land uses and are an active target for recovery (Walker and Silletti 2006). The starting point for our work is a previously published qualitative reference model (Walker and Silletti 2006), which describes a degradation gradient in longleaf pine understory plant diversity and composition caused by past agricultural land use, altered fire regimes, and silvicultural activities (see also Mitchell 2009). Agricultural legacies can persist for decades following abandonment, leading to reduced understory diversity and modified community composition on post-agricultural sites (Hedman et al 2000.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing and Testing a Robust, Multi-Scale Framework for the Recovery of Longleaf Pine Understory Communities

Orrock¹,

Damschen²,

Brudvig³

et al. 2015

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Range of Variability in Southern Coastal Plain Forests: Its Historical, Contemporary, and Future Role in Sustaining Biodiversity

Cited by 29 publications

References 22 publications

Land-Use History and Contemporary Management Inform an Ecological Reference Model for Longleaf Pine Woodland Understory Plant Communities

Land-Use History and Contemporary Management Inform an Ecological Reference Model for Longleaf Pine Woodland Understory Plant Communities

Characterizing hydrologic change through catchment classification

Developing and Testing a Robust, Multi-Scale Framework for the Recovery of Longleaf Pine Understory Communities

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