Managing Forests for Water in the Anthropocene—The Best Kept Secret Services of Forest Ecosystems

Abstract

Water and forests are inextricably linked. Pressures on forests from population growth and climate change are increasing risks to forests and their aquatic ecosystem services (AES). There is a need to incorporate AES in forest management but there is considerable uncertainty about how to do so. Approaches that manage forest ecosystem services such as fiber, water and carbon sequestration independently ignore the inherent complexities of ecosystem services and their responses to management actions, with the potential for unintended consequences that are difficult to predict. The ISO 31000 Risk Management Standard is a standardized framework to assess risks to forest AES and to prioritize management strategies to manage risks within tolerable ranges. The framework consists of five steps: establishing the management context, identifying, analyzing, evaluating and treating the risks. Challenges to implementing the framework include the need for novel models and indicators to assess forest change and resilience, quantification of linkages between forest practice and AES, and the need for an integrated systems approach to assess cumulative effects and stressors on forest ecosystems and AES. In the face of recent international agreements to protect forests, there are emerging opportunities for international leadership to address these challenges in order to protect both forests and AES.

Increased reliance of stream macroinvertebrates on terrestrial food sources linked to forest management intensity

“…Most of the streams were located in the Black Brook (BB) forestry district, which is considered one of the most intensively managed forests in Canada and it is third-party certified as sustainably managed under the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (Etheridge et al 2005). Considering that forestry has been predicted to intensify in the near future (Creed et al 2016), and that the need to demonstrate the sustainability of forestry practices is also increasing (CCME 2016), BB provides an opportunity to assess how the potential "forestry of the future" may impact stream food webs. The main objective of this study was to quantify the relative contributions of autochthonous vs. allochthonous sources of energy to headwater stream macroinvertebrates, and to understand how different forest catchment conditions that arise from varying intensities of forest management under best management practices affect those contributions.…”

Linking stream ecosystem integrity to catchment and reach conditions in an intensively managed forest landscape

“…Yet, comparatively little is known of the cumulative effects of intensive forest management on stream ecosystems, which could be a critical information gap considering that the industry is expected to intensify in the future (Creed et al. ). Therefore, we sought to understand whether existing BMPs are effective at protecting streams and their associated aquatic ecosystem services from the cumulative effects associated with this intensification by conducting our study in an intensively managed forest watershed.…”

“…However, disturbances can happen at different times and locations in the catchment and with different harvesting techniques (e.g., clearcutting or thinning) and may be compounded by the effects of roads, site preparation, herbicide application, etc., resulting in a high potential for cumulative impacts of forest management on aquatic ecosystems (Kreutzweiser et al 2013, Webster et al 2015). Yet, comparatively little is known of the cumulative effects of intensive forest management on stream ecosystems, which could be a critical information gap considering that the industry is expected to intensify in the future (Creed et al 2016). Therefore, we sought to understand whether existing BMPs are effective at protecting streams and their associated aquatic ecosystem services from the cumulative effects associated with this intensification by conducting our study in an intensively managed forest watershed.…”

Functional diversity response to hardwood forest management varies across taxa and spatial scales

“…Silvicultural systems were designed to enhance the growth and yield of targeted commercial tree species. In the 1980s, forest management began moving toward a paradigm of ecosystem-based management that includes other ecosystem services (Creed et al 2016). This newer focus is inspiring research to examine how silvicultural systems affect the biodiversity of non-commercial plant and non-game animal species (Hunter and Schmiegelow 2011).…”