Source: OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY submitted to
QUANTIFYING TRADEOFFS BETWEEN ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND INTENSIVE FOREST MANAGEMENT
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
TERMINATED
Funding Source
AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1005739
Grant No.
2015-67019-23178
Project No.
OREZ-FES-870
Proposal No.
2014-06853
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Program Code
A1451
Project Start Date
Feb 15, 2015
Project End Date
Feb 14, 2020
Grant Year
2015
Project Director
Betts, M. G.
Recipient Organization
OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
CORVALLIS,OR 97331
Performing Department
Forest Ecosystem Science Prg
Non Technical Summary
The goal of this research is to develop approaches to manage forested landscapes to maintain critical ecosystem services while sustaining high levels of timber production. In collaboration with forest managers, we will address this goal via three objectives: (1) implement a large-scale, long-term manipulative study to assess intensive forest management (IFM) effects on biodiversity components (birds, ungulates, arthropods, pollinators, plants); (2) provide the first test of how IFM interacts with these biodiversity components to influence four key ecosystem services (timber production, pollination, soil productivity, and carbon storage); and (3) quantify the tradeoffs (and potential synergies) between timber production and other ecosystem services, including the development of long-term (50-year) economic models to forecast the response of ecosystem services to different silvicultural regimes. We will quantify biodiversity components and ecosystem services on regenerating stands that have been subjected to one of 4 experimental treatments: Light Herbicide, Moderate Herbicide, Heavy Herbicide, No Herbicide Control. Permanent exclosures within stands allow us to test the independent effects of (a) browsing by deer and elk, and (b) bird predation on herbivorous arthropods on timber production and other ecosystem services. Our project is directly relevant to the Institute for Working Forest Landscapes as it: (1) advances our understanding of how biodiversity components are linked to the functionality, sustainability, and socioeconomic viability of intensively managed agroecosystems, and (2) uses empirical data and a regional-scale planning tool that can be used by managers to identify tradeoffs among multiple ecosystem services, (3) determine optimal amounts and configurations of management treatments across landownerships to sustain Oregon forest ecosystems while maintaining timber production.
Animal Health Component
10%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
30%
Applied
70%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
12308501070100%
Knowledge Area
123 - Management and Sustainability of Forest Resources;

Subject Of Investigation
0850 - Wildlife habitats;

Field Of Science
1070 - Ecology;
Goals / Objectives
(1) implement a large-scale, long-term manipulative study to assess intensive forest management (IFM) effects on biodiversity components (birds, ungulates, arthropods, pollinators, plants); (2) provide the first test of how IFM interacts with these biodiversity components to influence four key ecosystem services (timber production, pollination, soil productivity, and carbon storage); and (3) quantify the tradeoffs (and potential synergies) between timber production and other ecosystem services, including the development of long-term (50-year) economic models to forecast the response of ecosystem services to different silvicultural regimes. We will quantify biodiversity components and ecosystem services on regenerating stands that have been subjected to one of 4 experimental treatments: Light Herbicide, Moderate Herbicide, Heavy Herbicide, No Herbicide Control.
Project Methods
Please see project proposal for detailed methods (10 pages).We will quantify biodiversity components and ecosystem services on regenerating stands that have been subjected to one of 4 experimental treatments: Light Herbicide, Moderate Herbicide, Heavy Herbicide, No Herbicide Control. Permanent exclosures within stands allow us to test the independent effects of (a) browsing by deer and elk, and (b) bird predation on herbivorous arthropods on timber production and other ecosystem services.

Progress 02/15/15 to 02/14/20

Outputs
Target Audience:1. Federal and State Governments, 2. Forest Industry, 3. Non-industrial forest land owners, 4. Public Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?1. Thomas Stokely successfully defended his PhD 2. Scott Harris - PhD (4th year) 3. Urs Kormann - Postdoc (now hired as a professor at U. Bern, Switzerland) 4. David Frey - Masters student successfullly defended in 2019. 5. Many undergraduates (>15) who are learning about field data collection How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?For publications, please see attached and above. Our project has resulted in 15 organized field tours for managers from private and governmental institutions, and small private landowners. The PI, Co-PIs, and their students delivered >80 public or scientific seminars detailing project findings. We collaborated with the Oregon Forest Resources Institute to organize a major conference to translate our scientific results into management recommendations for forest managers throughout the Pacific Northwest (attendance >300). We have led two courses at OSU-extension's "Tree School" to provide information on conserving biodiversity on tree farms and organized two major sessions at scientific meetings (Oregon-Washington Wildlife Society [Portland, OR], Society of American Foresters National Meeting [Portland, OR]). Finally, we organized a major Early Seral Science and Management Workshop and field tour that synthesized our findings and operationalized them for management (>150 managers attended; https://www.forestbiodiversity.org/earlyseral). Our previous AFRI grant leveraged >$500,000 from non-federal agencies and foundations. Much of this funding was possible due to the scientific credibility afforded by the AFRI award. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? This work examined the effects of IFM on bird abundance and diversity (Betts et al. 2013), bird demography (Rivers et al. 2019, 2020), ecosystem services provided by birds (Harris et al. 2020), arthropod biomass and moth diversity (Root et al. 2016), ungulate habitat use (Stokely et al. 2018, 2019, 2020) and pollinators (Rivers et al. 2018). Our research has revealed that practices that promote rapid timber production (i.e., herbicides) often have negative effects on the abundance and diversity of birds, pollinators, moths and plants, but that these effects dissipate after 3-5 years following herbicide applications (Kroll et al. 2017, Stokely et al. 2020, Kormann et al. In review). We quantified stand-level tradeoffs between the ecosystem service of timber production and many elements of biodiversity. We have synthesized the findings of this study in a paper (Kormann et al. In review) that examines tradeoffs between timber growth and revenue in relation to biodiversity and ecosystem services. Finally, we recently presented these results in a policy briefing to the Oregon Board of Forestry, and we have been invited to testify to the Oregon Legislature on the topic of herbicides and biodiversity.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Rivers, J. W., Jones, K.N. and Betts, M.G. 2020. Neither forest herbicides nor ambient temperature exert strong effects on reproductive output of a cavity-nesting songbird. Avian Conservation and Ecology 15(1):18. https://www.ace-eco.org/vol15/iss1/art18/
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Harris, S., Stokely, T.S., Verschuyl, J., Kroll, A.J., Kormann, U., and Betts, M.G. 2020. Do birds help trees grow? An experimental study of the effects of land-use intensification on avian trophic cascades. Ecology 101(6): 2020, e03018
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Stokely, T.D., Kormann, U.K., and Betts, M.G. 2020. Synergistic effects of wild ungulates and management intensification suppress native plants and promote exotics. Forest Ecology and Management 460: 117772
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2020 Citation: Stokely, T.S., and Betts, M.G. 2020. Deer?mediated ecosystem service versus disservice depends on forest management intensity. Journal of Applied Ecology. doi: 10.1111/1365-2664.13532
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Phalan, B., Northrup, J., Deal, B., Rousseau, J., Yang, Z., and Betts, M.G. 2019. Impacts of the Northwest Forest Plan on forest composition and bird populations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 116:3322-3327.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2019 Citation: Rivers, J.W., Verschuyl, J., Kroll, A.J., and Betts, M.G. 2019. No evidence of a demographic response to experimental herbicide treatments by an early successional forest bird. Condor. 121:1-3.


Progress 02/15/17 to 02/14/18

Outputs
Target Audience:Forest Industry, Federal and State government, Academics, Public Changes/Problems:We have encountered a few problems. First, the PI (Betts) was diagnosed with stage II renal cell carcinoma in 2016 (he is now in remission). Also, he had a major field accident in the field (his tropical field site) where he broke 7 bones including his neck and skull. A further complication has been that the postdoc hired to conduct the ecosystem services synthesis paper was hired away to a position as a professor in Switzerland. Nevertheless, we think we have made very good progress, all things considered, with 3 peer-reviewed publications last year, one in press, and one major synthesis paper about to be submitted to a high-impact journal. However, for these reasons, we will be requesting a no-cost extension to continue the project until February 2020. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?1. Thomas Stokely successfully defended his PhD 2. Scott Harris - PhD (2nd year) 3. Urs Kormann - Postdoc (now hired as a professor at U. Bern, Switzerland) 4. David Frey - Masters student successfullly defended this past spring. 5. Many undergraduates (>15) who are learning about field data collection How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?1. Scientific journal articles (see above) 2. Public presentations 3. Presentations at scientific conferences What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?1. Submit major 'biodiversity-timber tradeoffs' paper within the next month 2. Continue to work on, and complete paper on ecosystem services in managed forests. We now have all data assembled, some preliminary analysis complete, and the people in place to accomplish the paper. 3. We are organizing a major conference in Corvallis, Oregon to present the overall project findings, lead a field tour of our sites, with a focus on translating science into concrete policy and management recommendations (conference scheduled for June 3-4, 2019)

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? (1) We continue to collect long-term data on birds, ungulates, arthropods, pollinators, plants. We are about to start the 9th year of data collection on all taxa except pollinators (3 years of data). (2) We are collecing data on ecosystem services (Soil carbon storage: Jeff Hatten, Pollination: Betts, Tree growth: Stokely, Betts). (3) Scott Harris (PhD student) is nearing completion of a paper (to be submitted to Ecology) that examines the effect of bird exclusion on arthropods and subsequently tree growth. (4) We have completed our synthesis paper that summarizes the effects of intensive forest management on biodiversity, and the degree to which biodiversity trades off against timber production and economic benefits. This paper will be submitted to Science within the month (it includes >800 taxa and is the world's largest intensive forest management experiment, with over 8 years of data and hundreds of thousands of organisms sampled). (5) Thomas Stokely successfully defended his PhD and has now continued work in the lab as a postdoc focused on ecosystem services in intensively managed forests.

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Stokely, T.D., Verschuyl, J., Hagar, J.C. and Betts, M.G. 2018. Herbicides and herbivory interact to drive plant community and crop-tree establishment. Ecological Applications 28 (8), 2011-2023. 10.1002/eap.1777.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Jones, K.N., Rivers, J.W., and Betts, M.G. 2018. Herbicides Exert Weak and Variable Effects on Microclimate in Early-Seral Forests. Northwest Science 92(2): 107-118.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2018 Citation: Rivers, J.W., Mathis, C.L., Moldenke, A.R. and Betts, M.G. 2018. Wild bee diversity is enhanced by experimental removal of timber harvest residue within intensively managed conifer forest. Global Change Biology Bioenergy. 10.1111/gcbb.12531.


Progress 02/15/16 to 02/14/17

Outputs
Target Audience:1. Forest Industry 2. State government (Oregon Dept. of Forestry) 3. Federal Government (USFS, BLM) 4. Woodlot owners (small forest land owners) 5. Public 6. Scientific community Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?1. Thomas Stokely - PhD (4th year) 2. Scott Harris - PhD (1st year) 3. Urs Kormann - PhD (1st year) 4. David Frey - Masters student (1st year) 5. Many undergraduates (>15) who are learning about field data collection How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?1. Scientific journal articles (see above) 2. Public presentations 3. Presentations at scientific conferences What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?1. Continue to lead field tours 2. Publish >4 peer-reviewed papers on empirical data (currently three are already in review) 3. Organize early seral biodiversity conference in 2018

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? (1) We continue to collect long-term data on birds, ungulates, arthropods, pollinators, plants. We are about to start the 8th year of data collection on all taxa except pollinators (3 years of data). (2) We are collecing data on ecosystem services (Soil carbon storage: Jeff Hatten, Pollination: Betts, Tree growth: Stokely, Betts). (3) We have hired a new PhD student (Scott Harris) who willbegin to model tradeoffs within the next 12 months. Tradeoffs will be examined at stand and landscape scales. We also hosted a workshop focussed on trade-off modeling. In addition, our AFRI funds helped to leverage additional grants from OSU and NCASI to further support empirical data collection

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Kroll, A. J., Verschuyl, J., Giovanini, J., Betts, M. G. (2016). Assembly dynamics of a forest bird community depend on disturbance intensity and foraging guild. Journal of Applied Ecology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12773
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: Root, H. T., Betts, M. G. (2016). Managing Moist Temperate Forests for Bioenergy and Biodiversity. Journal of Forestry, 114(1), 66-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.5849/jof.14-114
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Root, H.T., Verschuyl, J., Hammond, P., Stokely, T., Scherr, M. and Betts, M.G. 2017. Plant diversity enhances moth diversity in an intensive forest management experiment. Ecological Applications 27: 134142.
  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: Strauss, S.H., Jones, K.N., Lu, H., Petit, J.D., Klocko, A.L., Betts, M.G., Brosi, B.J., Fletcher, R.J. and Needham, M.D. 2017. Genetically engineered reproductive modification in trees: potential biodiversity impacts and social dimensions. New Phytologist 213 (3): 1000-1021


Progress 02/15/15 to 02/14/16

Outputs
Target Audience:1. Forest Management Companies (Weyerhaeuser, Forest Capital) 2. State Goverment (Oregon Dept. of Forestry) 3. Small private forest landowners 4. Academics 5. Media 6. Federal Government (USDA Forest Service) Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?1. Graduate Students: Thomas Stokely (PhD), Scott Harris (PhD) 2. Special symposium for landowners on management of forests for early seral biodiversity 3. Many undergraduates (>15) who are learning about field data collection How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?1. We continue to lead field tours (4 last field season) for policy makers, scientists and managers. 2. We hosted an Early Seral Songbird Symposium (>700 attendees): http://oregonforests.org/songbird-symposium 3. In cooperation with Oregon Forest Industries Research Council we published a book on Wildlife in Managed Forests: http://oregonforests.org/sites/default/files/publications/pdf/OFRI_WIMF_Songbirds_web.pdf What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?1. Continue to lead field tours 2. Publish >4 peer-reviewed papers on empirical data (currently three are already in review)

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? (1) We continue to collect long-term data on birds, ungulates, arthropods, pollinators, plants. We are about to start the 7th year of data collection on all taxa except pollinators (3 years of data). (2) We are collecing data on ecosystem services (Soil carbon storage: Jeff Hatten, Pollination: Betts, Tree growth: Stokely, Betts). (3) We are hiring a new PhD student who will begin to model tradeoffs within the next 12 months. Tradeoffs will be examined at stand and landscape scales. We also hosted a workshop focussed on trade-off modeling. In addition, our AFRI funds helped to leverage additional grants from OSU and NCASI to further support empirical data collection

Publications

  • Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2016 Citation: Root, H. and Betts M.G. 2016. Managing moist temperate forests for bioenergy and biodiversity. Journal of Forestry 114(1): 66-74.
  • Type: Theses/Dissertations Status: Accepted Year Published: 2015 Citation: Jones, K. 2015 ?Combined Effects of Intensive Forest Management and Microclimate on Reproduction in a Cavity-Nesting Songbird. Oregon State University, Dec. 2015