Statistically-Estimated Tree Composition for the Northeastern United States at Euro-American Settlement

Paciorek, Christopher J.; Goring, Simon; Thurman, Andrew L.; Cogbill, Charles V.; Williams, John W.; Mladenoff, David J.; Peters, Jody A.; Zhu, Jun; McLachlan, J. S.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150087

Cited by 33 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Data assimilation, however, requires assessment of observational and model uncertainty in the data sources used for data assimilation. Spatio-temporal models of uncertainty have been developed for the compositional data [73]. …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lakes St Lawrence projection; S1 File: base_calculations . R ) to create a dataset that has sufficient numerical power for spatial statistical modeling and sufficient resolution for regional scale analysis [73]. This resolution is finer than the 100km 2 gridded scale used in Freidman and Reich [18], but coarser than township grids used in other studies [17,57] to provide a scale comparable to aggregated FIA data at a broader scale.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Novel and Lost Forests in the Upper Midwestern United States, from New Estimates of Settlement-Era Composition, Stem Density, and Biomass

et al. 2016

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BackgroundEuroAmerican land-use and its legacies have transformed forest structure and composition across the United States (US). More accurate reconstructions of historical states are critical to understanding the processes governing past, current, and future forest dynamics. Here we present new gridded (8x8km) reconstructions of pre-settlement (1800s) forest composition and structure from the upper Midwestern US (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and most of Michigan), using 19th Century Public Land Survey System (PLSS), with estimates of relative composition, above-ground biomass, stem density, and basal area for 28 tree types. This mapping is more robust than past efforts, using spatially varying correction factors to accommodate sampling design, azimuthal censoring, and biases in tree selection.Changes in Forest StructureWe compare pre-settlement to modern forests using US Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data to show the prevalence of lost forests (pre-settlement forests with no current analog), and novel forests (modern forests with no past analogs). Differences between pre-settlement and modern forests are spatially structured owing to differences in land-use impacts and accompanying ecological responses. Modern forests are more homogeneous, and ecotonal gradients are more diffuse today than in the past. Novel forest assemblages represent 28% of all FIA cells, and 28% of pre-settlement forests no longer exist in a modern context. Lost forests include tamarack forests in northeastern Minnesota, hemlock and cedar dominated forests in north-central Wisconsin and along the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and elm, oak, basswood and ironwood forests along the forest-prairie boundary in south central Minnesota and eastern Wisconsin. Novel FIA forest assemblages are distributed evenly across the region, but novelty shows a strong relationship to spatial distance from remnant forests in the upper Midwest, with novelty predicted at between 20 to 60km from remnants, depending on historical forest type. The spatial relationships between remnant and novel forests, shifts in ecotone structure and the loss of historic forest types point to significant challenges for land managers if landscape restoration is a priority. The spatial signals of novelty and ecological change also point to potential challenges in using modern spatial distributions of species and communities and their relationship to underlying geophysical and climatic attributes in understanding potential responses to changing climate. The signal of human settlement on modern forests is broad, spatially varying and acts to homogenize modern forests relative to their historic counterparts, with significant implications for future management.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novel and Lost Forests in the Upper Midwestern United States, from New Estimates of Settlement-Era Composition, Stem Density, and Biomass

et al. 2016

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“…As described in (Dawson et al 2016), Public Land Survey (PLS) forest composition data compiled by Goring et al (2016) and statistically interpolated by Paciorek et al (2016), as well as settlement-era pollen data, were used to calibrate STEPPS. The PLS compilation for this domain comprised 367,209 corner points and included various corrections to minimize surveyor biases in PLS data, including spatially varying correction factors for sampling design, corrections for azimuthal censoring, setting minimum diameter limits, aggregation to genus, and aggregation to an 8-km grid , Cogbill et al 2018).…”

Section: Calibration Data Setmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying trends and uncertainty in prehistoric forest composition in the upper Midwestern United States

Dawson

Paciorek

Goring

et al. 2019

Ecology

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Forest ecosystems in eastern North America have been in flux for the last several thousand years, well before Euro‐American land clearance and the 20th‐century onset of anthropogenic climate change. However, the magnitude and uncertainty of prehistoric vegetation change have been difficult to quantify because of the multiple ecological, dispersal, and sedimentary processes that govern the relationship between forest composition and fossil pollen assemblages. Here we extend STEPPS, a Bayesian hierarchical spatiotemporal pollen–vegetation model, to estimate changes in forest composition in the upper Midwestern United States from about 2,100 to 300 yr ago. Using this approach, we find evidence for large changes in the relative abundance of some species, and significant changes in community composition. However, these changes took place against a regional background of changes that were small in magnitude or not statistically significant, suggesting complexity in the spatiotemporal patterns of forest dynamics. The single largest change is the infilling of Tsuga canadensis in northern Wisconsin over the past 2,000 yr. Despite range infilling, the range limit of T. canadensis was largely stable, with modest expansion westward. The regional ecotone between temperate hardwood forests and northern mixed hardwood/conifer forests shifted southwestward by 15–20 km in Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin. Fraxinus, Ulmus, and other mesic hardwoods expanded in the Big Woods region of southern Minnesota. The increasing density of paleoecological data networks and advances in statistical modeling approaches now enables the confident detection of subtle but significant changes in forest composition over the last 2,000 yr.

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“…As discussed in Paciorek et al (2016), the surveys in our domain occurred over a period of more than 100 years (starting in 1799 in Indiana and ending in 1907 in Minnesota) as settlers from the United States and Europe settled what is now the midwestern United States. Our estimates are for the period of settlement represented by the survey data and therefore are time-transgressive; they do not represent any single point in time across the domain, but rather the state of the landscape at the time just prior to widespread Euro-American settlement and land use (Whitney, 1996;Cogbill et al, 2002).…”

Section: Pls Data Collection and Cleaningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast to Paciorek et al (2016) we estimate biomass and density rather than composition and we use an extended dataset with additional data cleaning steps that were applied more consistently across the region. Relative to Goring et al (2016) we use a spatial statistical model to smooth over the noisy grid-level estimates; we extend the domain to include southern Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana; we use updated allometric scaling factors from Chojnacky et al (2014); and we apply additional and more consistent data cleaning steps across the domain.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistically-estimated tree biomass, stem density, and basal area for the upper Midwestern United States at the time of Euro-American settlement

et al. 2019

Preprint

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We present gridded 8 km-resolution data products of the estimated biomass, basal area, and stem density of tree taxa at the time of Euro-American settlement of the midwestern United States for the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana. The data come from settlement-era Public Land Survey (PLS) data (ca. 0.8-km resolution) of trees recorded by land surveyors. The surveyor notes have been transcribed, cleaned, and processed to estimate biomass, basal area, and stem density at individual points on the landscape. The point-level data are then aggregated within grid cells and statistically smoothed using a statistical model that accounts for zero-inflated continuous data with smoothing based on generalized additive modeling techniques and approximate Bayesian uncertainty estimates. We expect this data product to be useful for understanding the state of vegetation in the midwestern United States prior to large-scale Euro-American settlement. In addition to specific regional questions, the data product can serve as a baseline against which to investigate how forests and ecosystems change after intensive settlement. The data products (including both raw and statistically smoothed estimates at the 8-km scale) are being made available at the LTER network data portal as version 1.0.

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Statistically-Estimated Tree Composition for the Northeastern United States at Euro-American Settlement

Cited by 33 publications

References 31 publications

Novel and Lost Forests in the Upper Midwestern United States, from New Estimates of Settlement-Era Composition, Stem Density, and Biomass

Novel and Lost Forests in the Upper Midwestern United States, from New Estimates of Settlement-Era Composition, Stem Density, and Biomass

Quantifying trends and uncertainty in prehistoric forest composition in the upper Midwestern United States

Statistically-estimated tree biomass, stem density, and basal area for the upper Midwestern United States at the time of Euro-American settlement

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