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Harvard Forest REU Symposium Abstract 2023
- Title: Modeling the impacts of climate change, altered disturbance regimes, and forest management on the forest carbon stocks of Northern New England forests
- Author: Maegan Beckage (University of Vermont (UVM))
- Abstract:
Forests play a critical role in climate change mitigation because they sequester and store carbon. Forest management can impact the amount of carbon stored in wood either as live forest biomass or in harvested wood products. In this project I sought to understand the impacts of forest management (with and without climate change) on forest carbon, how climate change and increased disturbances affect the amount of carbon stored in forests, and what land management practices increase resilience to climate change and forest carbon storage. I did this by utilizing the LANDIS-II landscape model. LANDIS simulates change in forests as a function of growth and succession. It models how these drivers are influenced by multiple environmental factors such as wind, fire, insects, land management, etc. All simulations were conducted on a 36 ha landscape that represents the northern hardwood forests of Essex, Vermont. This location was chosen because of its range in tree species with different climate resistant abilities. I tested different scenarios of climate change and increased ecological disturbances (with the expectation that climate change will alter and exacerbate disturbance regimes). Climate change is implemented in the model as elevated temperature and CO2 level at a rate that reflects observational data. I used four different management prescriptions (uneven harvest, shelterwood harvest, climate adaptability harvest, and grow only) in this experiment. I compared the dynamics of tree species’ biomass in each of the forest plots under each of the management prescriptions as well as the carbon levels. I found that the climate change scenario proved to increase the biomass of the forest, however the composition of the species in the forest had changed. Climate change combined with increased disturbances led to a slightly lower level of biomass in comparison to a static environment. The climate adaptability management prescription had the smallest harvest, thus retaining the most biomass and carbon storage on the landscape.
- Research Category: Forest-Atmosphere Exchange; Ecological Informatics and Modelling; Conservation and Management
