Recipient Organization
UNIV OF MINNESOTA
(N/A)
ST PAUL,MN 55108
Performing Department
Forest Resources
Non Technical Summary
Climate change and related impacts such as increased temperatures, longer growing seasons, variation in the nature and timing of precipitation, elevated CO2, hydrological changes, and increased drought and disturbance are all expected to change the functioning, productivity, and health of Minnesota's forests. Impacts of these changes may include increased tree mortality during droughts and disturbance events, expanded pest and disease ranges, shifts in native species ranges, and interactions among stressors that may lead to loss of forested areas and associated plant and animal species. As a result, there is an urgent need to develop adaptive management strategies that foster ecosystem resilience to the impact of climate change, and enable forests to adapt to uncertain future conditions. This project will implement a large-scale operational study in two forest types to evaluate management practices that meet the long-term goal of increasing the resilience of Minnesota forests to forest threats including climate change.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
50%
Applied
50%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
1. Quantify short-term and long-term effects of adaptation treatments on plant species composition, productivity, and forest health in red pine-dominated forests.2. Evaluate short-term growth and survival of several companion species planted in harvested gaps of ash-dominated wet forests as well as long-term resilience of these areas to emerald ash borer infestation.
Project Methods
1. Site-specific treatments representing three different management options of resistance, resilience, and transition have been developed for the Cutfoot Experimental Forest on the Chippewa National Forest and will be implemented in winter 2015 (four replicates of each). Another replicate of these treatments will be located at the Cloquet Forestry Center (CFC). Each treatment unit will be 25 acres. We will replicate silvicultural treatments representing the climate change adaptation options of resistance, resilience, and transition, along with no management, and evaluate short-term and long-term treatment effectiveness based on field measurements and modeling of variables related to forest species composition, ecosystem productivity, and forest health.Baseline data will be collected at each site before trees are removed, and two and four years following treatment implementation. Baseline inventory plots will be structured similar to the USDA Forest Inventory and Analysis Program. Eight nested plots in each treatment unit will be installed to record species, diameter, and height of each overstory tree. Saplings, seedlings, and understory plants will be inventoried on microplots. Forest productivity will be estimated from biomass and basal area growth. Forest health will be assessed through crown measurements and mortality counts for each vegetation layer. The duration of this project is three to five years. The requested time is necessary to develop treatment scenarios, implement treatments, collect pre- and post-treatment data, run model analyses, and synthesize results.We will use a modeling approach to evaluate possible long-term treatment outcomes. We will use the eastern version of Climate-FVS, an extension for the Forest Vegetation Simulator to model long-term treatment outcomes and evaluate the success of each adaptation treatment with respect to species composition, ecosystem productivity, and forest health objectives. The Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) is an individual tree, distance-independent forest growth and yield model designed to simulate the impacts of a variety of silvicultural treatments on long-term patterns of tree growth, regeneration, and mortality. We plan to use Climate-FVS to model treatment outcomes on 25, 50, and 100 year time scales. We will use tree data from our pre-treatment sampling as the initial condition for the models and simulate the effects of silvicultural treatments that are coded to represent our treatments at each study site.2. In an effort to further evaluate recent findings and bolster the resilience of the CFC's ash forests, we intend to track the growth and survival of potential replacement species planted in ash stands with some level of overstory manipulation. Study treatments will include a mitigative group selection harvest treatment and a control. Harvest of 0.25-acre gaps will take place in 4 stands 10 acres in size the winter of 2014 to 2015 with operational plantings taking place the following spring of 2015. Treatments will be planted with six species: Acer rubrum, Abies balsamea, Celtis occidentalis, Quercus bicolor, Quercus macrocarpa and Ulmus americana. Seedling censuses, including diameter and height growth as well as survival, will occur at the end of the first (2015), second (2016), and third (2017) growing seasons. The intent of this project will be to evaluate initial findings from regional studies in an operational harvest.