Eastern national parks protect greater tree species diversity than unprotected matrix forests

Miller, Kathryn M.; McGill, Brian J.; Mitchell, B. R.; Comiskey, Jim; Dieffenbach, Fred; Matthews, Elizabeth R.; Perles, Stephanie J.; Weed, Aaron S.

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2018.02.018

Cited by 16 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…The overall high abundance and increasing expansion of invasives that we documented in many eastern parks may be surprising to the broader community of ecologists, as parks are often expected to be in better condition because of their protection status. In fact, we have shown that forests in eastern parks are regionally significant in having older forest structure and higher stand‐level tree diversity than surrounding unprotected forests (Miller et al, 2016, 2018). The high and often increasing abundance of invasives that we documented in the majority of the parks in our study poses significant threats to the long‐term condition of the forests in these same parks, and is in conflict with the mission of the National Park Service.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long‐term trends indicate that invasive plants are pervasive and increasing in eastern national parks

Miller

McGill

Weed

et al. 2020

Ecological Applications

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While invasive plant distributions are relatively well known in the eastern United States, temporal changes in species distributions and interactions among species have received little attention. Managers are therefore left to make management decisions without knowing which species pose the greatest threats based on their ability to spread, persist and outcompete other invasive species. To fill this gap, we used the U.S. National Park Service’s Inventory and Monitoring Program data collected from over 1,400 permanent forest plots spanning 12 yr and covering 39 eastern national parks to analyze invasive plant trends. We analyzed trends in abundance at multiple scales, including plot frequency, quadrat frequency, and average quadrat cover. We examined trends overall, by functional group, and by species. We detected considerably more increasing than decreasing trends in invasive plant abundance. In fact, 80% of the parks in our study had at least one significant increasing trend in invasive abundance over time. Where detected, significant negative trends tended to be herbaceous or graminoid species. However, these declines were often countered by roughly equivalent increases in invasive shrubs over the same time period, and we only detected overall declines in invasive abundance in two parks in our study. Present in over 30% of plots and responsible for the steepest and greatest number of significant increases, Japanese stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum) was the most aggressive invader in our study and is a high management priority. Invasive shrubs, especially Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii), Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora), and wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius), also increased across multiple parks, and sometimes at the expense of Japanese stiltgrass. Given the added risks to human health from tick‐borne diseases, invasive shrubs are a high management priority. While these findings provide critical information to managers for species prioritization, they also demonstrate the incredible management challenge that invasive plants pose in protected areas, particularly since we documented few overall declines in invasive abundance. As parks work to overcome deferred maintenance of infrastructure, our findings suggest that deferred management of natural resources, particularly invasive species, requires similar attention and long‐term commitment to reverse these widespread increasing invasive trends.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long‐term trends indicate that invasive plants are pervasive and increasing in eastern national parks

Miller

McGill

Weed

et al. 2020

Ecological Applications

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“…Large trees and intact, older forests are not only effective and cost-effective natural reservoirs of carbon storage, they also provide essential habitat that is often missing from younger, managed forests (Askins, 2014). For example, intact forests in Eastern U.S. national parks have greater tree diversity, live and dead standing basal area, and coarse woody debris, than forests that are managed for timber (Miller et al, 2016(Miller et al, , 2018; Table 1). The density of cavities in older trees and the spatial and structural heterogeneity of the forest increases with stand age (Ranius et al, 2009;Larson et al, 2014), and large canopy gaps develop as a result of mortality of large trees, which result in dense patches of regeneration (Askins, 2014).…”

Section: Habitat Protection Biodiversity and Scientific Value Of Proforestationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intact Forests in the United States: Proforestation Mitigates Climate Change and Serves the Greatest Good

Moomaw

Masino

Faison³

2019

Front. For. Glob. Change

112

103

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Climate change and loss of biodiversity are widely recognized as the foremost environmental challenges of our time. Forests annually sequester large quantities of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), and store carbon above and below ground for long periods of time. Intact forests-largely free from human intervention except primarily for trails and hazard removals-are the most carbon-dense and biodiverse terrestrial ecosystems, with additional benefits to society and the economy. Internationally, focus has been on preventing loss of tropical forests, yet U.S. temperate and boreal forests remove sufficient atmospheric CO 2 to reduce national annual net emissions by 11%. U.S. forests have the potential for much more rapid atmospheric CO 2 removal rates and biological carbon sequestration by intact and/or older forests. The recent 1.5 Degree Warming Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change identifies reforestation and afforestation as important strategies to increase negative emissions, but they face significant challenges: afforestation requires an enormous amount of additional land, and neither strategy can remove sufficient carbon by growing young trees during the critical next decade(s). In contrast, growing existing forests intact to their ecological potential-termed proforestation-is a more effective, immediate, and low-cost approach that could be mobilized across suitable forests of all types. Proforestation serves the greatest public good by maximizing co-benefits such as nature-based biological carbon sequestration and unparalleled ecosystem services such as biodiversity enhancement, water and air quality, flood and erosion control, public health benefits, low impact recreation, and scenic beauty.

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“…The forests in ACAD and the surrounding forest matrix show distinct characteristics compared to the other seven parks in terms of their structural stage, density of large (>30 cm DBH) trees, and tree species diversity (Miller et al. 2016, 2018), underscoring that local forest cover alone does not account for all forest characteristics potentially important to bird breeding and foraging ecology. Further, it is important to note that while abundance in ACAD declines with forest cover, these sites were surrounded by relatively high forest cover, and even the points with the lowest forest cover are still surrounded by substantial forested habitat that could be enough habitat to attract and maintain many forest dwelling species (Willson 1974, Zuckerberg and Porter 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…ACAD, MABI, and MORR on average had the most forest within a 1 km radius of each point. However, these forests vary considerably in structural stage (Miller et al 2016), type, and diversity (Miller et al 2018), suggesting that declines in bird abundance might be driven by factors other than forest structure. MABI is the only park in the network that is subject to logging, which has led to decreases in basal area, crown closure, and tree density and increases in regeneration over the study period that could contribute to the strong decreasing trends in bird abundance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in bird abundance differ among protected forests but not bird guilds

Doser

Weed

Zipkin

et al. 2021

Ecological Applications

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Improved monitoring and associated inferential tools to efficiently identify declining bird populations, particularly of rare or sparsely distributed species, is key to informed conservation and management across large spatiotemporal regions. We assess abundance trends for 106 bird species in a network of eight forested national parks located within the northeast United States from 2006 to 2019 using a novel hierarchical model. We develop a multispecies, multiregion, removal‐sampling model that shares information across species and parks to enable inference on rare species and sparsely sampled parks and to evaluate the effects of local forest structure. Trends in bird abundance over time varied widely across parks, but species showed similar trends within parks. Three parks (Acadia National Park and Marsh‐Billings‐Rockefeller and Morristown National Historical Parks [NHP]) decreased in bird abundance across all species, while three parks (Saratoga NHP and Roosevelt‐Vanderbilt and Weir‐Farm National Historic Sites) increased in abundance. Bird abundance peaked at medium levels of basal area and high levels of percent forest and forest regeneration, with percent forest having the largest effect. Variation in these effects across parks could be a result of differences in forest structural stage and diversity. By sharing information across both communities and parks, our novel hierarchical model enables uncertainty‐quantified estimates of abundance across multiple geographical (i.e., network, park) and taxonomic (i.e., community, guild, species) levels over a large spatiotemporal region. We found large variation in abundance trends across parks but not across bird guilds, suggesting that local forest condition might have a broad and consistent effect on the entire bird community within a given park. Research should target the three parks with overall decreasing trends in bird abundance to further identify what specific factors are driving observed declines across the bird community. Understanding how bird communities respond to local forest structure and other stressors (e.g., pest outbreaks, climate change) is crucial for informed and lasting management.

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Eastern national parks protect greater tree species diversity than unprotected matrix forests

Cited by 16 publications

References 61 publications

Long‐term trends indicate that invasive plants are pervasive and increasing in eastern national parks

Long‐term trends indicate that invasive plants are pervasive and increasing in eastern national parks

Intact Forests in the United States: Proforestation Mitigates Climate Change and Serves the Greatest Good

Trends in bird abundance differ among protected forests but not bird guilds

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