MANAGEMENT AND CONSERVATION OF COASTAL SPRUCE FORESTS FOR RESILIENCE TO RAPID WARMING

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: ACTIVE
• Funding Source: AFRI COMPETITIVE GRANT
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 1030310
• Grant No.: 2023-67020-40089
• Cumulative Award Amt.: $643,848.00
• Proposal No.: 2022-09804
• Project Start Date: Sep 1, 2023
• Project End Date: Aug 31, 2026
• Grant Year: 2023
• Program Code: [A1451]- Renewable Energy, Natural Resources, and Environment: Agroecosystem Management

Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF MAINE
(N/A)
ORONO,ME 04469

Performing Department
(N/A)

Non Technical Summary
Spruce-fir forests are widely recognized as one of the most at-risk forest types in the northeastern US due to their sensitivity and exposure to climate change. The coast of Maine has historically served as a climate macrorefugia for spruce forests. However, extreme ocean warming, rising inland temperatures, and increasingly variable precipitation strongly suggest that major declines in coastal spruce forests may be imminent. Unfortunately, we havelittle knowledge about how these spruce forests will change and the impacts on forest ecosystem services. The overall objective of this proposal is to identify the factors that promote coastal spruce forests, assess the risks posed by climate change, and develop tools to manage for resilience. Our central hypothesis is that rapid climate warming makes coastal spruce ecosystems extremely vulnerable to climate change due to the species' requirement for cool moist conditions, low tree species diversity, and the region'slimited active management. We will achieve this objective by 1) identifying the factors driving recent and current trends in coastal spruce distributions, 2) quantifying coastal spruce forest dynamics and sensitivity to climate stressors, and 3) identifying how climate reduces spruce germination, establishment, growth, and survival. We have brought together nine top conservation organizations from coastal Maine in this multidisciplinary project to coproduce these research objectives. We will produce the first fine-scale maps of the current distribution of coastal spruce forests including potential locations for conservation, management, and restoration as well as generate new data on stand dynamics and climate sensitivity to inform local management and conservation decisions. Our diverse research team allows us to bridge scales from leaf to landscape, making us uniquely positioned to improve management and conservation of this threatened ecosystem.

Animal Health Component

30%

Research Effort Categories

Basic

60%

Applied

30%

Developmental

10%

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
123	0610	1070	90%
123	0610	3100	10%

Knowledge Area
123 - Management and Sustainability of Forest Resources;

Subject Of Investigation
0610 - Conifer forests of the North;

Field Of Science
1070 - Ecology; 3100 - Management;

Keywords

climate change

conservation

management

regeneration

remote sensing

spruce forests

Goals / Objectives
The overall objective of this proposal is to identify the factors that promote coastal spruce forests, assess the risks posed by climate change, and develop tools to manage for resilience. We will achieve this objective by 1) identifying the factors driving recent and current trends in coastal spruce distributions, 2) quantifying coastal spruce forest dynamics and sensitivity to climate stressors, and 3) identifying how climate reduces spruce germination, establishment, growth, and survival.

Project Methods
This project employs a multi-scale approach to achieve our three project objectives.The first objective is to identify the factors driving recent and current trends in coastal spruce distribution. This objective covers the entire coast of Maine and focuses on remote sensing of forest distributions, disturbance, and stress. We will create a regional-scale map of the current distribution of coastal spruce forest in Maine that will be combined with annual maps of disturbance showing trends in forest change over the satellite record (1980s to present). The regional distribution map will consist of wall-to-wall estimates of the fractional (%) cover of coastal spruce forest within each 30 m grid cell across the coast of Maine that is calibrated to ground plot measurements. We will also quantify disturbance metrics (Landsat detected changes in forest cover using LandTrendr) including year, magnitude, and recovery since 1984 for the entire region to determine how disturbance patterns vary by land ownership, geography, and conservation status. Finally, we will leverage new satellite-based remotely sensed data on ecophysiological stress (ECOSTRESS) and traditional metrics of greenness (NDVI) to identify the environmental conditions and landscape positions that may be indicative of future declines in coastal spruce populations.The second objective is to quantify coastal spruce forest dynamics and sensitivity to climate stressors. This work will focus on the forest stand scale in 24 stands along the coast of Maine. The stands will cover a range of canopy structure. In each stand we will establish 50x50m fixed plots to survey canopy trees, saplings, seedlings, coarse woody material, microclimate, and tree growth. These data will be used to determine the stand dynamics of these coastal spruce ecosystems and guide our ecologically informed management guidelines. The tree cores will also be used to determine tree-growth sensitivity to climate and how that sensitivity depends on the location along the coast, tree age, and tree canopy position.Finally, the third objective is to understand how climate limits spruce germination, establishment, growth, and survival. This will be accomplished by setting up experimental plantings at 10 locations along the coast and inland. At each location, we will have varying shade conditions (forest understory, open field) and herbivory (fenced and unfenced) plots. In each plot we will plant saplings and sow seeds of ten different tree species and monitor climate conditions. We will determine the primary factors that create the microclimate conditions that are favorable for germination and establishment of the ten tree species. We will also track longer-term survival and growth of the saplings of spruce and these competing trees.Efforts: To drive changes in knowledge, actions, and conditions we will pursue the following efforts:Conducting cross-scale multidisciplinary researchGuiding graduate student research projectsEngaging stakeholders in project design and executionLeading a workshop and field tourPresentations at national, regional, and local conferencesEvaluation: We will assess the success of our project through the following evaluations and metrics:Progress by graduate students on theses and dissertationsPeer-reviewed publications, management guidelines, and public presentations by our research teamNumber of attendees at our workshop, field tour, and panel discussionSoliciting feedback from our key stakeholders during annual meetings on the extent to which the project is meeting their needs and expectations

Progress 09/01/23 to 08/31/24

Outputs
Target Audience:During this reporting period our target audience has been collaborating scientists, collaborating partners helping with field site selection and establishment, and the interested public. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The first year of this project has provided critical opportunities for training of graduate and undergruate students. For example, all graduate students on this project have taken importnat coursework including those on proposal development and writing, responisble conduct of research, quantitative methods, and field skills. The leadership team regularly meets with graduate and undergraduate students for field and laboratory training related to their specific projects. Furthermore, we have begin mentoring sessions on data analysis and visualization in preparation for thesis and manuscript preparation to begin next project period. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We held our first annual cooperators meeting before the first field season via Zoom with more than 30 total participants. The project PI and each graduate student affiliated with the project reported on their planned project activities and we held small breakout sessions to gather participant feedback and codevelop project plans and outcomes. This process improved site and methods selection, strengthened our relationships with our key collaboration group, and helped celebrate the success of the project, to date. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Next project period will be focused on data processing, analysis, and writing. Wewill have two MS students preparing theses and approaching graduation. Each thesis is antitipated to lead to substatial progress ontwo peer-reviewed publications during the next period and/or the period after. In addition to writing outputs, we will have students presenting at local and regional conferences related to our work. We also have some follow-up measurements to continue in the second field season related to each aim. Finally, we will be planning our collaboration with the Maine Coast Heritage Trust to hold a panel discussion at their annual land conservation conference and we will hold our second annual cooperators meeting.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? This project is right on track and we have made important progress towards all objectives. This first year has been focused on student recruit, site establishment, and starting our experiments. Specifically, we have accomplished the following related to each objective: 1) recruited and trained one MS student.They have done preliminary analysis of several remotely sensed data products and have initial maps of some variables. In summer 2024 they have been planning and conducting drone flights on forest inventory plots along the coast. 2) We recruited a PhD student for this part of the project and we have established 21 new forest inventory plots covering the entire extent of the coastal spruce resource. Site establishment includes identifying candidate locations, establishing a plot center, collecting soil samples, measuring a large fixed area plot for forest overstory and understory vegetation, and collecting tree increment cores from 30-50 red spruce trees per site. Data have been regularly entered and checked through the summer and increment cores are already being processed. Two undergraduate students are working with this student over the summer and are also running related indepenent research projects. 3) We recruited an MS student to conducted experiments on early-life stages of coastal trees. We established 8 planting beds across the entire range of coastal spruce forests and acquired and planted seeds of 10 treespecies at all 8 sites (1,080 seeds planted total). We also planted 4 bare-root saplings of 10 tree species at each site and 200 more locally for physiological measurements (520 saplings total). We also established a local experiment on campus by growing more than 900 seedlings of 9 species from seed in the greenhouse and have used custom designed heat and drought chambers to implement heatwaves and drought conditions on these seedlings. We are tracking emergence, growth, survival, and physiological metrics like water potential on a subset of the seedlings.

Publications

• Type: Other Status: Other Year Published: 2024 Citation: 2024 Wason J, MacDonald E*, and Pinover L*. Assisted Migration of Maine's Forests: Insights from Experimental Planting Studies in Maine. Invited seminar for the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (May).