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

Abstract

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.

Regeneration Responses to Management for Old-Growth Characteristics in Northern Hardwood-Conifer Forests

“…The approach is to manage for high biomass stand structures such as those often found in old-growth forests [1,2]. This could entail, for example, emulating-through various retention forestry techniques-the type of natural disturbances and stand development processes leading to the development of high biomass conditions [3,4]. Prior to European settlement, forests in the northeastern U.S. were dominated by relatively frequent, gap-forming and partial disturbances that created a finely patterned mosaic of successional conditions [5,6].…”

Detecting regional differences in within-wildfire burn patterns in western boreal Canada

“…Others use the historic range of variation (HRV) to define reference conditions for ecological restoration activities (Moore et al 1999). There is also growing interest in using knowledge of HRV more generally to evaluate biological risk via the relative distance between current conditions and the natural range (North and Keeton 2008). Regardless of the application, the premise is the same; since ecosystem functions and species have co-evolved with specific disturbance regime characteristics, by approximating For personal use only.…”

Late-Successional and Old-Growth Forests in the Northeastern United States: Structure, Dynamics, and Prospects for Restoration

“…As a consequence of that land-use history, the age structure of forests in northeastern North America is likely much younger than that before extensive European settlement [11][12][13][14], but many anticipate a broad restoration of at least some late-successional and old-growth structure as those forests age in portions of the region (e.g., [15]). To the degree that late-successional and old-growth forests are underrepresented on the landscape, managing for the restoration of structures and services associated with those forests could be an important silvicultural goal [16,17].…”