Evaluating the role of active management in mature Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) stands for songbird conservation

Williams, Neil G.; Hagar, Joan C.; Powers, Matthew D.

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2021.119609

Cited by 2 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 107 publications

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“…The retention harvest management condition examined in this study is an example of the latter strategy. The results from this study and Williams et al (2021), and findings elsewhere (e.g., Hansen & Hounihan, 1996;Odsen et al, 2018;Rosenvald & Lõhmus, 2008;Shea et al, 2017), suggest that structural retention may, to some extent, defray trade-offs between conservation of late-successional and early-successional forest birds.…”

Section: Trade-offs Between Late-successional Forest Birds and Early-...supporting

confidence: 71%

“…Some formal trade‐off analyses have detected similar congruence between these two forest management objectives (e.g., Carpentier et al, 2017; Fürstenau et al, 2007; Heinonen et al, 2017; Triviño et al, 2017), but it is notable that many of these analyses assume an equivalence between biodiversity and late‐successional biodiversity, using elements of forest structure that are typically maximized in late‐successional forests as proxies for biodiversity. Our findings indicate that forest structures providing lower relative carbon benefits (such as the retention harvest stands in our sample) may also yield substantial biodiversity benefits (Williams, 2019; also see Hagar, 2007; Swanson et al, 2011, 2014), resulting in high biodiversity–carbon storage trade‐offs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…For the drought adaptation component of this study, we collected cores from trees in all eight study blocks. We collected songbird data in a subset of six study blocks (Williams et al, 2021), and therefore restricted the trade‐off analysis to these six study blocks (Table 1). In all cases, data used in this study were collected from 2016 to 2018.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With the exception of drought resistance and drought resilience, data used in this trade-off analysis have been published in previous studies of management effects on stand structure (Williams & Powers, 2019a), carbon storage (Williams & Powers, 2019b), and forest birds (Williams et al, 2021). We briefly summarize these data below for the five forest management objective categories in this trade-off analysis, focusing on the specific variables employed in the trade-off analysis.…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this study, we limited the quantification of trade-offs to combinations of two objectives (termed "pairwise objective combinations" or "pairwise trade-offs"). We adopted this approach because increasing the number of objectives also increases the complexity in visualizing and interpreting trade-off scores (Williams, 2019), which may reduce the applied value of the results. For each pairwise objective combination, we calculated the magnitude of the trade-off.…”

Section: Analytical Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Trade‐offs among management objectives in mature Douglas‐fir forests of the Pacific Northwest

Williams,

Powers

2024

Ecosphere

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Mature conifer‐dominated forests are an important component of the Pacific Northwest landscape, and the conservation of species associated with late‐successional forests has been a primary management focus in these forests for decades. Increasingly, these forests are also valued as carbon stores, with considerable climate change mitigation potential. However, there are also increasing concerns about the effects of climate change, particularly drought, on late‐successional forests. Despite the complexity of balancing these diverse management concerns, few studies have examined the compatibility of biodiversity conservation, carbon storage, and drought adaptation. We used a spatially and temporally synchronous empirical dataset from mature Douglas‐fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) stands representing three alternative management strategies, passive management (“unmanaged”), thinning, and retention harvest, to examine trade‐offs among management objectives related to drought adaptation, carbon storage, and the conservation of early‐successional and late‐successional forest songbirds. Although previous studies have evaluated drought adaptation in Douglas‐fir, none have focused on mature stands. Therefore, we also examined tree resistance and resilience to the 2001 drought. Trees in retention harvest stands displayed significantly higher drought resistance and resilience than trees in thinned or unmanaged stands, but no differences were observed between trees in the latter two management conditions, potentially due to the long (average of 22 years) period between treatment and drought in our thinned stands. Despite this, thinned stands provided a better multiobjective compromise than unmanaged or retention harvest stands in our trade‐off analysis. Across all mature stands, trade‐offs were largest for objective combinations that involved early‐ or late‐successional forest birds. While our analysis supports the consistency of managing late‐successional forest birds and carbon storage, trade‐offs between early‐successional birds and carbon storage were much larger. Given projected changes in climate, the substantial trade‐offs that we observed between drought adaptation and late‐successional forest birds are notable and imply that achieving these two objectives will be challenging at the stand scale. Our results suggest that a diversity of management approaches, incorporating both active management and reserve‐based strategies, may be necessary to foster a combination of drought adaptation, carbon storage, and biodiversity conservation goals in these forests.

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