Spatial resilience of forested landscapes under climate change and management

Abstract

Context Resilience, the ability to recover from disturbance, has risen to the forefront of scientific policy, but is difficult to quantify, particularly in large, forested landscapes subject to disturbances, management, and climate change. Objectives Our objective was to determine which spatial drivers will control landscape resilience over the next century, given a range of plausible climate projections across north-central Minnesota. Methods Using a simulation modelling approach, we simulated wind disturbance in a 4.3 million ha forested landscape in north-central Minnesota for 100 years under historic climate and five climate change scenarios, combined with four management scenarios: business as usual (BAU), maximizing economic returns ('EcoGoods'), maximizing carbon storage ('EcoServices'), and climate change adaption ('CCAdapt'). To estimate resilience, we examined sites where simulated windstorms removed [70% of the biomass and measured the difference in biomass and species composition after 50 years. Results Climate change lowered resilience, though there was wide variation among climate change scenarios. Resilience was explained more by spatial variation in soils than climate. We found that BAU, EcoGoods and EcoServices harvest scenarios were very similar; CCAdapt was the only scenario that demonstrated consistently higher resilience under climate change. Although we expected spatial patterns of resilience to follow ownership patterns, it was contingent upon whether lands were actively managed. Conclusions Our results demonstrate that resilience may be lower under climate change and that the effects of climate change could overwhelm current management practices. Only a substantial shift in simulated forest practices was successful in promoting resilience.

More than the sum of its parts: how disturbance interactions shape forest dynamics under climate change

“…) contained 34 tree species (Table ) at a resolution of 4 ha (Lucash et al. ). The map was a compilation of plot data from the CNF and imputed U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis data (FIA; http://fia.fs.fed.us/) using three maps: two published studies (Wolter et al.…”

“…, Lucash et al. ). This extension simulates aboveground and belowground growth of leaves, wood, fine roots, and coarse roots of each cohort on each site at a monthly timestep (Scheller et al.…”

“…For example, growth limitation by soil moisture is a function of available water (determined through algorithms of precipitation of snow and rain, evapotranspiration, interception, runoff, and leaching; Lucash et al. ) and a user‐defined curve of how production relates to soil water availability (specified by the extension's predecessor, the CENTURY soil model v 4.5; Parton et al. ).…”

Widespread severe wildfires under climate change lead to increased forest homogeneity in dry mixed‐conifer forests

“…❖ www.esajournals.org 4 November 2019 ❖ Volume 10(11) ❖ Article e02934 forest succession and interactions with fire, harvest, wind, and insects (Scheller et al 2008, Duveneck et al 2014, Kretchun et al 2016, Krofcheck et al 2017, Lucash et al 2017. LANDIS-II uses the life-history traits of tree and shrub species, along with soil and climate data, to simulate succession and responses to disturbances over time.…”

Tree resilience to drought increases in the Tibetan Plateau

“…In the Amazon rainforest, tree resilience to climate extremes is lower in floodplains than uplands, suggesting that vulnerability to wildfires is responsible for the pattern of spatial resilience (Flores et al, 2017). Forested landscape in north-central Minnesota showed that climate change would reduce resilience (Lucash, Scheller, Gustafson, & Sturtevant, 2017). Forested landscape in north-central Minnesota showed that climate change would reduce resilience (Lucash, Scheller, Gustafson, & Sturtevant, 2017).…”