Vegetation Change Over Sixty Years In the Central Sierra Nevada, California, USA

Thorne, James H.; Morgan, B.; Kennedy, Jeffery A.

doi:10.3120/0024-9637-55.3.223

Cited by 57 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…None Thorne et al 2004;Thorne et al 2008;Rubidge et al 2011;Thorne et al 2013;Santos et al 2014a;Santos et al 2014b; None Figure 1). …”

Section: Plot Data and Plot Mapsunclassified

“…For example, Thorne et al (Thorne et al 2008) compared the digital VTM vegetation maps to contemporary remote-sensing products such as CALVEG; (Schwind and Gordon 2001) and found significant changes in vegetation types in the Placerville quadrangle on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada. They used the California Wildlife Habitat Relationships (CWHR) classes (Mayer and Laudenslayer 1988) as a crosswalk between the two data types, and found significant shifts in WHR classes.…”

Section: Th Century Changes To Vegetation Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Best practices must be used to minimize, estimate, and report the total spatial error in the final digital data product . Such reported measures are critical to guide researchers on the use of the VTM data (Thorne et al 2008).…”

Section: Challenges With the Use Of Historical Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Comparisons must deal with these differences, and manipulate modern data to best compare with historical data (sensu Dolanc et al 2013a;McIntyre et al 2015). In contrast, the VTM vegetation maps have a much higher species detail than is provided on modern land cover maps, which requires simplification of the historical vegetation classes and cross-walking of historical and modern classification schemes prior to contemporary analyses (sensu Thorne et al 2008;Thorne et al 2013). Second, ecological taxonomy has changed since the early 20th century (Barbour et al 2007), and confusion resulting from species name changes can occur, and careful crosswalking between historical and modern species names is required.…”

Section: Challenges With the Use Of Historical Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…comm.). Examples of the collection are found in Figure 1; and more details of the collection can be found several publications Thorne et al 2008;Thorne and Le in press).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rescuing and Sharing Historical Vegetation Data for Ecological Analysis: The California Vegetation Type Mapping Project

Kelly¹

2016

Biodiv. Inf.

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Abstract.-Research efforts that synthesize historical and contemporary ecological data with modeling approaches improve our understanding of the complex response of species, communities, and landscapes to changing biophysical conditions through time and in space. Historical ecological data are particularly important in this respect. There are remaining barriers that limit such data synthesis, and technological improvements that make multiple diverse datasets more readily available for integration and synthesis are needed. This paper presents one case study of the Wieslander Vegetation Type Mapping project in California and highlights the importance of rescuing, digitizing and sharing historical datasets. We review the varied ecological uses of the historical collection: the vegetation maps have been used to understand legacies of land use change and plan for the future; the plot data have been used to examine changes to chaparral and forest communities around the state and to predict community structure and shifts under a changing climate; the photographs have been used to understand changing vegetation structure; and the voucher specimens in combination with other specimen collections have been used for large scale distribution modeling efforts. The digitization and sharing of the data via the web has broadened the scope and scale of the types of analysis performed. Yet, additional research avenues can be pursued using multiple types of VTM data, and by linking VTM data with contemporary data. The digital VTM collection is an example of a data infrastructure that expands the potential of large scale research through the integration and synthesis of data drawn from numerous data sources; its journey from analog to digital is a cautionary tale of the importance of finding historical data, digitizing it with best practices, linking it with other datasets, and sharing it with the research community.

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“…None Thorne et al 2004;Thorne et al 2008;Rubidge et al 2011;Thorne et al 2013;Santos et al 2014a;Santos et al 2014b; None Figure 1). …”

Section: Plot Data and Plot Mapsunclassified

Section: Th Century Changes To Vegetation Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Challenges With the Use Of Historical Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Challenges With the Use Of Historical Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…comm.). Examples of the collection are found in Figure 1; and more details of the collection can be found several publications Thorne et al 2008;Thorne and Le in press).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Rescuing and Sharing Historical Vegetation Data for Ecological Analysis: The California Vegetation Type Mapping Project

Kelly¹

2016

Biodiv. Inf.

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Challenges and Limitations of Using a DGVM for Local to Regional Applications

Bachelet¹,

Rogers

Conklin

2015

Global Vegetation Dynamics

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Forest structure and climate mediate drought‐induced tree mortality in forests of the Sierra Nevada, USA

Restaino

Young

Estes

et al. 2019

Ecological Applications

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Extreme drought stress and associated bark beetle population growth contributed to an extensive tree mortality event in California, USA, resulting in more than 129 million trees dying between 2012 and 2016. Although drought is an important driver of this mortality event, past and ongoing fire suppression and the consequent densification of forests may have contributed. In some areas, land management agencies have worked to reduce stand density through mechanical treatments and prescribed fire to restore forests to less dense, more open conditions that are presumably more resilient to disturbance and changing climate. Here, we evaluate if stand structural conditions associated with treated (e.g., thinned and prescribed burned) forests in the Sierra Nevada of California conferred more resistance to the bark beetle epidemic and drought event of 2012–2016. We found that, compared to untreated units, treated units had lower stand densities, larger average tree diameters, and greater dominance of pines (Pinus), the historically dominant trees. For all tree species studied, mortality was substantially greater in climatically drier areas (i.e., lower elevations and latitudes). Both pine species studied (ponderosa pine [Pinus ponderosa] and sugar pine [Pinus lambertiana]) had greater mortality in areas where their diameters were larger, suggesting a size preference for their insect mortality agents. For ponderosa pine, the tree species experiencing greatest mortality, individual‐tree mortality probability (for a given tree diameter) was significantly lower in treated stands. Ponderosa pine mortality was also positively related to density of medium‐ to large‐sized conspecific trees, especially in areas with lower precipitation, suggesting that abundance of nearby host trees for insect mortality agents was an important determinant of pine mortality. Mortality of incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens) and white fir (Abies concolor) was positively associated with basal area, suggesting sensitivity to competition during drought, but overall mortality was lower, likely because the most prevalent and effective mortality agents (the bark beetles Dendroctonus brevicomis and D. ponderosae) are associated specifically with pine species within our study region. Our findings suggest that forest thinning treatments are effective in reducing drought‐related tree mortality in forests, and they underscore the important interaction between water and forest density in mediating bark beetle‐caused mortality.

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Vegetation Change Over Sixty Years In the Central Sierra Nevada, California, USA

Cited by 57 publications

References 13 publications

Rescuing and Sharing Historical Vegetation Data for Ecological Analysis: The California Vegetation Type Mapping Project

Rescuing and Sharing Historical Vegetation Data for Ecological Analysis: The California Vegetation Type Mapping Project

Challenges and Limitations of Using a DGVM for Local to Regional Applications

Forest structure and climate mediate drought‐induced tree mortality in forests of the Sierra Nevada, USA

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