The role of canopy structural complexity in wood net primary production of a maturing northern deciduous forest

Hardiman, Brady S.; Bohrer, Gil; Gough, Christopher M.; Vogel, Christoph S.; Curtis, Peter S.

doi:10.1890/10-2192.1

Cited by 218 publications

(240 citation statements)

References 50 publications

(74 reference statements)

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“…The capacity for increased AGB in both landscapes is likely due to forest recovery following a history of intense timber harvesting (Pyne 1982, Flader 1983, Bö ttcher et al 2012. As forests mature, the sustained increase in AGB total expected under current climate can be further explained by the projected increase in canopy structural complexity (Hardiman et al 2011). In addition, the simplification of the initial communities within the modeling framework results in a simulated increase in cohort heterogeneity.…”

Section: Aboveground Biomassmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change effects on northern Great Lake (USA) forests: A case for preserving diversity

et al. 2014

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Abstract. Under business as usual (BAU) management, stresses posed by climate change may exceed the ability of Great Lake forests to adapt. Temperature and precipitation projections in the Great Lakes region are expected to change forest tree species composition and productivity. It is unknown how a change in productivity and/or tree species diversity due to climate change will affect the relationship between diversity and productivity. We assessed how forests in two landscapes (i.e., northern lower Michigan and northeastern Minnesota, USA) would respond to climate change and explored the diversityproductivity relationship under climate change. In addition, we explored how tree species diversity varied across landscapes by soil type, climate, and management. We used a spatially dynamic forest ecosystem model, LANDIS-II, to simulate BAU forest management under three climate scenarios (current climate, low emissions, and high emissions) in each landscape. We found a positive relationship between diversity and productivity only under a high emissions future as productivity declined. Within landscapes, climate change simulations resulted in the highest diversity in the coolest climate regions and lowest diversity in the warmest climate region in Minnesota and Michigan, respectively. Simulated productivity declined in both landscapes under the high emissions climate scenario as species such as balsam fir (Abies balsamea) declined in abundance. In the Great Lakes region, a high emissions future may decrease forest productivity creating a more positive relationship between diversity and productivity. Maintaining a diversity of tree species may become increasingly important to maintain the adaptive capacity of forests.

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Section: Aboveground Biomassmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change effects on northern Great Lake (USA) forests: A case for preserving diversity

et al. 2014

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“…Decadal records of tree growth indicate that resilience to age-related declines in NPP is highest where a diversity of canopy tree species is present because later successional species rapidly compensate for the declining growth of early successional species (Gough et al, 2010b). Investigators are also finding that resilience of forest production to disturbance is dependent upon canopy structural reorganizations that enhance C uptake by increasing light use efficiency (Hardiman et al, 2011; and by hydrodynamic responses that increase postdisturbance water use efficiency in some species (Matheny et al, 2015).…”

Section: The Forest Accelerated Succession Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moderate forest disturbance as a stringent test for gap and big-leaf models

et al. 2015

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Abstract. Disturbance-induced tree mortality is a key factor regulating the carbon balance of a forest, but tree mortality and its subsequent effects are poorly represented processes in terrestrial ecosystem models. It is thus unclear whether models can robustly simulate moderate (non-catastrophic) disturbances, which tend to increase biological and structural complexity and are increasingly common in aging US forests. We tested whether three forest ecosystem models -Biome-BGC (BioGeochemical Cycles), a classic big-leaf model, and the ZELIG and ED (Ecosystem Demography) gap-oriented models -could reproduce the resilience to moderate disturbance observed in an experimentally manipulated forest (the Forest Accelerated Succession Experiment in northern Michigan, USA, in which 38 % of canopy dominants were stem girdled and compared to control plots). Each model was parameterized, spun up, and disturbed following similar protocols and run for 5 years post-disturbance. The models replicated observed declines in aboveground biomass well. Biome-BGC captured the timing and rebound of observed leaf area index (LAI), while ZELIG and ED correctly estimated the magnitude of LAI decline. None of the models fully captured the observed post-disturbance C fluxes, in particular gross primary production or net primary production (NPP). Biome-BGC NPP was correctly resilient but for the wrong reasons, and could not match the absolute observational values. ZELIG and ED, in contrast, exhibited large, unobserved drops in NPP and net ecosystem production. The biological mechanisms proposed to explain the observed rapid resilience of the C cycle are typically not incorporated by these or other models. It is thus an open question whether most ecosystem models will simulate correctly the gradual and less extensive tree mortality characteristic of moderate disturbances.

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“…Our findings build on and advance these prior results by showing that remote sensing applications of coupled ground-based LiDAR and ground penetrating radar, which both operate at finer spatial scales, may provide an order of magnitude higher (<10 m) resolution. High resolution, non-destructive co-quantification of canopy and root structure could be used to infer and interpret ecosystem functions requiring understanding of fine-scale structure, including primary production [30,60], animal habitat suitability and diversity [61,62], and tree-scale hydrologic processes [21,63].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coupling Fine-Scale Root and Canopy Structure Using Ground-Based Remote Sensing

et al. 2017

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Ecosystem physical structure, defined by the quantity and spatial distribution of biomass, influences a range of ecosystem functions. Remote sensing tools permit the non-destructive characterization of canopy and root features, potentially providing opportunities to link above-and belowground structure at fine spatial resolution in functionally meaningful ways. To test this possibility, we employed ground-based portable canopy LiDAR (PCL) and ground penetrating radar (GPR) along co-located transects in forested sites spanning multiple stages of ecosystem development and, consequently, of structural complexity. We examined canopy and root structural data for coherence (i.e., correlation in the frequency of spatial variation) at multiple spatial scales ≤10 m within each site using wavelet analysis. Forest sites varied substantially in vertical canopy and root structure, with leaf area index and root mass more becoming even vertically as forests aged. In all sites, above-and belowground structure, characterized as mean maximum canopy height and root mass, exhibited significant coherence at a scale of 3.5-4 m, and results suggest that the scale of coherence may increase with stand age. Our findings demonstrate that canopy and root structure are linked at characteristic spatial scales, which provides the basis to optimize scales of observation. Our study highlights the potential, and limitations, for fusing LiDAR and radar technologies to quantitatively couple above-and belowground ecosystem structure.Keywords: canopy; root; biomass; spatial wavelet coherence; radar; LiDAR Highlights •Canopy and root biomass are examined across a forest chronosequence.• Colocated ground-based LiDAR and ground-penetrating radar data were collected.• Spatial wavelet analysis reveals coherence in canopy height and root biomass. •All ages exhibited coherence between canopy and root structures at a scale of 3-4 m; oldest stands demonstrated coherence at 8 m. •We demonstrate methods to quantify fine-scale patterns of root-canopy structure.

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The role of canopy structural complexity in wood net primary production of a maturing northern deciduous forest

Cited by 218 publications

References 50 publications

Climate change effects on northern Great Lake (USA) forests: A case for preserving diversity

Climate change effects on northern Great Lake (USA) forests: A case for preserving diversity

Moderate forest disturbance as a stringent test for gap and big-leaf models

Coupling Fine-Scale Root and Canopy Structure Using Ground-Based Remote Sensing

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