Impact of fire and harvest on forest ecosystem services in a species‐rich area in the southern Appalachians

Abstract

To mitigate and adapt to climate change, forest carbon sequestration and diversity of the ecosystem must be included in forest management planning, while satisfying the demand for wood products. The future provisions of ecosystem services under six realistic management scenarios were assessed to achieve that goal. These services were carbon sequestration, types and quantities of roundwood harvested, and different indicators of forest health—biomass of major species, species diversity, and variation of tree age. A spatially explicit forest succession model was combined with statistical analyses to conduct the assessment at the level of both the whole forest landscape and different ecological zones (ecozones) within. An important aspect of this study was to explore the effects of the biophysical heterogeneity of different ecological zones on the outcomes of different management scenarios. The study area was located in an area of the southern Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina with high tree diversity and active forest management activities. Along with a range of management practices, such richness in diversity allowed us to examine the complexity of the interaction between management activities and species competition. The results showed that fire suppression had a greater effect on increasing biomass carbon sequestration than any management scenario that involves harvest and replanting afterward, but at the expense of other indicators of forest health. The effect of fire on species composition was the largest in the xeric parts of the study area. Based on the study results, it was proposed that a low harvest intensity with a mix of fire and fire suppression across the landscape would best balance the need for roundwood products, biomass carbon sequestration, and desirable species composition. This study also demonstrated that the combination of a spatially explicit forest succession model and statistical analyses could be used to provide a robust and quantifiable projection of ecosystem service provisions and possible trade‐offs under different management scenarios.

Desde la adaptación a la innovación educativa en tiempo de pandemia

“…La Hidrología Forestal surge con la finalidad de estudiar los procesos hidrológicos en las cuencas forestales, y cómo se ven influidos por factores ambientales, fisiológicos y biométricos, como la precipitación, la radiación, temperatura, tipo de especie, superficie foliar y extensión y estructura de los ecosistemas forestales (Meng et al, 2019). En los últimos años, los ecosistemas forestales han sufrido importantes impactos; talas de bosques completos (Davari et al, 2020), conversión de paisajes naturales en plantaciones (Braun et al, 2017), incendios (Ling et al, 2020), destrucción de la vegetación de ribera (Acuña-Alonso et al, 2020), aumento de la presión agrícola (Dudley & Alexander, 2017) y ganadería intensivas (Kraham, 2017). Además, el cambio climático ha provocado un fuerte impacto en estos ecosistemas, aumentando los eventos meteorológicos extremos (Shekhar et al, 2020).…”

Short-term effect of wildfires and prescribed fires on ecosystem services

“…Depending on how we understand fire, it can be a destructive force or a tool that can increase the ecosystem services (the benefits that humans obtain from nature) quantity and quality if well managed. However, the impacts of prescribed fire on ecosystem services are a matter of debate [7,8,9,10], and several tradeoffs are often highlighted. Wildfires and prescribed fires have short-and long-term effects on ecosystem services.…”