Timber harvest as the predominant disturbance regime in northeastern U.S. forests: effects of harvest intensification

Brown, Michelle; Canham, Charles D.; Murphy, Lora; Donovan, Therese M.

doi:10.1002/ecs2.2062

Cited by 34 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 59 publications

(124 reference statements)

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“…Temperate forests are heavily impacted by forest management 49 . We tested the robustness of the effect of edges on growth and biomass by withholding all subplots with a record of anthropogenic removals on the full FIA plot (i.e., management; n = 3642).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elevated growth and biomass along temperate forest edges

et al. 2021

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Fragmentation transforms the environment along forest edges. The prevailing narrative, driven by research in tropical systems, suggests that edge environments increase tree mortality and structural degradation resulting in net decreases in ecosystem productivity. We show that, in contrast to tropical systems, temperate forest edges exhibit increased forest growth and biomass with no change in total mortality relative to the forest interior. We analyze >48,000 forest inventory plots across the north-eastern US using a quasi-experimental matching design. At forest edges adjacent to anthropogenic land covers, we report increases of 36.3% and 24.1% in forest growth and biomass, respectively. Inclusion of edge impacts increases estimates of forest productivity by up to 23% in agriculture-dominated areas, 15% in the metropolitan coast, and +2% in the least-fragmented regions. We also quantify forest fragmentation globally, at 30-m resolution, showing that temperate forests contain 52% more edge forest area than tropical forests. Our analyses upend the conventional wisdom of forest edges as less productive than intact forest and call for a reassessment of the conservation value of forest fragments.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elevated growth and biomass along temperate forest edges

et al. 2021

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“…Past human activities (especially land clearing and forest harvesting) have altered landscape age structure and tree species composition, which in turn, influence natural disturbance patterns, current biodiversity, and ecosystem resilience. Harvesting has been the dominant disturbance agent in forests of the northeastern United States (Brown et al 2018) and in Nova Scotia (Cheng and Lee 2009;Colville and Prakash 2010), driving declines in biodiversity and ecosystem services (Miller and McGill 2019). Spruce budworm outbreaks may occur regardless of management unless Nova Scotia acts to mitigate outbreak effects by spraying insecticides to prevent mortality or outbreaks (MacLean 2016;MacLean et al 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural disturbance regimes for implementation of ecological forestry: a review and case study from Nova Scotia, Canada

MacLean

Taylor

Neily³

et al. 2022

Environ. Rev.

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Ecological forestry is based on the idea that forest patterns and processes are more likely to persist if harvest strategies produce stand structures, return intervals, and severities similar to those from natural disturbances. Taylor et al. (2020) reviewed forest natural disturbance regimes in Nova Scotia, Canada, to support implementation of ecological forestry. In this follow-up paper, we 1) review use of natural disturbance regimes to determine target harvest rotations, age structures, and residual stand structures; and 2) describe a novel approach for use of natural disturbance regimes in ecological forestry developed for Nova Scotia. Most examples of ecological forestry consider only the local, dominant disturbance agent, such as fire in boreal regions. Our approach included: 1) using current ecological land classification to map potential natural vegetation (PNV) community types; 2) determining cumulative natural disturbance effects of all major disturbances, in our case fire, hurricanes, windstorm, and insect outbreaks for each PNV; and 3) using natural disturbance regime parameters to derive guidelines for ecological forestry for each PNV. We analyzed disturbance occurrence and return intervals based on low, moderate, and high severity classes (<30, 30-60, and >60% of biomass of living trees killed), which were used to determine mean annual disturbance rates by severity class. Return intervals were used to infer target stand age-class distributions for high, moderate, and low severity disturbances for each PNV. The range of variation in rates of high severity disturbances among PNVs was from 0.28% yr-1 in Tolerant Hardwood to 2.1% yr-1 in the Highland Fir PNV, equating to return intervals of 357 years in Tolerant Hardwood to 48 yrs in Highland Fir PNVs. As an example, this return interval for the Tolerant Hardwood PNV resulted in target rotation lengths of 200 years for 35% of the PNV area, 500 years for 40%, and 1000 years for 25%. The proposed approach of determining natural disturbance regimes for PNV communities and calculating target disturbance rates and corresponding harvest rotation lengths or entry times appears to be a feasible method to guide ecological forestry in any region with a strong ecological land classification system and multiple disturbance agents.

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“…Some studies suggest that younger forests between 30 and 70 years (Catanzaro and D'Amato, 2019) or 40-80 years (Leverett et al, 2021) can sequester carbon at a faster rate than mature or old-growth forests. Other analyses indicate that lands reserved from logging in the Northeast have net carbon sequestration rates that are roughly 33% higher than in logged forests and are projected to sequester more carbon over the next 150 years (Brown et al, 2018). Nevertheless, the climate mitigation value of forest carbon lies not in the sequestration rate but in the total amount that is accumulated and kept out of the atmosphere (Mackey et al, 2013).…”

Section: Impacts On the Atmospherementioning

confidence: 99%

Forest-clearing to create early-successional habitats: Questionable benefits, significant costs

Kellett¹,

Maloof

Masino

et al. 2023

Front. For. Glob. Change

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A campaign is underway to clear established forests and expand early-successional habitats—also called young forest, pre-forest, early seral, or open habitats—with the intention of benefitting specific species. Coordinated by federal and state wildlife agencies, and funded with public money, public land managers work closely with hunting and forestry interests, conservation organizations, land trusts, and private landowners toward this goal. While forest-clearing has become a major focus in the Northeast and Upper Great Lakes regions of the U.S., far less attention is given to protecting and recovering old-forest ecosystems, the dominant land cover in these regions before European settlement. Herein we provide a discussion of early-successional habitat programs and policies in terms of their origins, in the context of historical baselines, with respect to species’ ranges and abundance, and as they relate to carbon accumulation and ecosystem integrity. Taken together, and in the face of urgent global crises in climate, biodiversity, and human health, we conclude that public land forest and wildlife management programs must be reevaluated to balance the prioritization and funding of early-successional habitat with strong and lasting protection for old-growth and mature forests, and, going forward, must ensure far more robust, unbiased, and ongoing monitoring and evaluation.

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Timber harvest as the predominant disturbance regime in northeastern U.S. forests: effects of harvest intensification

Cited by 34 publications

References 59 publications

Elevated growth and biomass along temperate forest edges

Elevated growth and biomass along temperate forest edges

Natural disturbance regimes for implementation of ecological forestry: a review and case study from Nova Scotia, Canada

Forest-clearing to create early-successional habitats: Questionable benefits, significant costs

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