DEVELOPING THEORY-BASED APPLIED SILVICULTURAL STRATEGIES TO PROVIDE DESIRED ECOSYSTEM SERVICES

Project: Research project

Project Details

Description

To be both effective and efficient, forest management to achieve desired objectives must be based in sound ecological theory with reliable mechanisms for translating it into practice. In particular, better understanding the timing of natural developmental processes will permit practitioners to carefully time manipulations to most efficiently take advantage of these processes so that nature can do most of the work. The physical structures that arise through natural stand development provide both clues to developmental processes and a potential template for silvicultural prescriptions. Previous work, therefore, has focused on quantifying structures in natural and managed stands, relating the effects of silvicultural treatments to structural complexity, and developing more flexible tools for exploring small-scale structural complexity across spatial scale. In doing so, however, discrepancies have arisen between predictions based on existing ecological theory and field observations of the actual outcomes of real development processes, particularly with regard to the temporal development of forest structure that serves as the basis for modern close-to-nature silviculture.We therefore propose to spend the next five years addressing two needs. First, we will expand the characterization of forest stand structural complexity across temporal scales to better incorporate developmental dynamics with the aim of refining the existing ecological theory about forest development that underlies management practices. Toward that end, we will test the hypotheses that (1) structural complexity, in a 10-ha stem-mapped old-growth European beech forest in the Ukraine, primarily arises through the patch mosaic model mechanism of fine-scale neighborhood dynamics, (2) individual-tree and stand-level growth and neighborhood-level structural complexity, using 20-years of growth data for 9 1-ha stem-mapped natural mixed conifer stands in south-central Oregon, are a function of neighborhood-level structural complexity, (3) structural complexity, in natural stem-mapped temperate hardwood forests in eastern Europe for which decades of inventory records are available, is driven by species composition and reaches a nadir in the middle phases of forest development, and (4) that apparently structurally disadvantaged oaks, based on a retrospective dendrochronological analysis of temporal dynamics in two 2.25 ha stem-mapped mixed hardwood stands in central Pennsylvania , can achieve canopy dominance and commercial timber volumes despite long-term neighborhood-level competition from initially faster growing species.Second, we will develop and improve tools to sustainably promote long-term resource utilization and economic development through (1) establishing a process for assessing the economic and ecologic sustainability of using small-diameter trees for the production of bio-energy from forest woody biomass, using Switzerland as a case study, (2) quantifying the overyielding effect of species mixtures and enhanced structural complexity for incorporation into the forest management software Silva, and (3) exploring the potential for developing veneer markets for the currently under-utilized tree species (e.g., red maple) that are expected to increase in abundance in the Mid-Atlantic region in future decades.

StatusFinished
Effective start/end date2/1/1812/31/22

Funding

  • National Institute of Food and Agriculture

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