TY - JOUR
T1 - Response of Sierra Nevada forests to projected climate–wildfire interactions
AU - Liang, Shuang
AU - Hurteau, Matthew D.
AU - Westerling, Anthony Le Roy
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture, under grant number GRANT11026720. We thank Melissa Lucash, Megan Creutzburg, and Louise Loudermilk for help with model parameterization and Jeanne Milostan for providing data support. We also thank the LANDIS-II User Group for help throughout this study and the anonymous reviewers who provided helpful feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
PY - 2017/5/1
Y1 - 2017/5/1
N2 - Climate influences forests directly and indirectly through disturbance. The interaction of climate change and increasing area burned has the potential to alter forest composition and community assembly. However, the overall forest response is likely to be influenced by species-specific responses to environmental change and the scale of change in overstory species cover. In this study, we sought to quantify how projected changes in climate and large wildfire size would alter forest communities and carbon (C) dynamics, irrespective of competition from nontree species and potential changes in other fire regimes, across the Sierra Nevada, USA. We used a species-specific, spatially explicit forest landscape model (LANDIS-II) to evaluate forest response to climate–wildfire interactions under historical (baseline) climate and climate projections from three climate models (GFDL, CCSM3, and CNRM) forced by a medium–high emission scenario (A2) in combination with corresponding climate-specific large wildfire projections. By late century, we found modest changes in the spatial distribution of dominant species by biomass relative to baseline, but extensive changes in recruitment distribution. Although forest recruitment declined across much of the Sierra, we found that projected climate and wildfire favored the recruitment of more drought-tolerant species over less drought-tolerant species relative to baseline, and this change was greatest at mid-elevations. We also found that projected climate and wildfire decreased tree species richness across a large proportion of the study area and transitioned more area to a C source, which reduced landscape-level C sequestration potential. Our study, although a conservative estimate, suggests that by late century, forest community distributions may not change as intact units as predicted by biome-based modeling, but are likely to trend toward simplified community composition as communities gradually disaggregate and the least tolerant species are no longer able to establish. The potential exists for substantial community composition change and forest simplification beyond this century.
AB - Climate influences forests directly and indirectly through disturbance. The interaction of climate change and increasing area burned has the potential to alter forest composition and community assembly. However, the overall forest response is likely to be influenced by species-specific responses to environmental change and the scale of change in overstory species cover. In this study, we sought to quantify how projected changes in climate and large wildfire size would alter forest communities and carbon (C) dynamics, irrespective of competition from nontree species and potential changes in other fire regimes, across the Sierra Nevada, USA. We used a species-specific, spatially explicit forest landscape model (LANDIS-II) to evaluate forest response to climate–wildfire interactions under historical (baseline) climate and climate projections from three climate models (GFDL, CCSM3, and CNRM) forced by a medium–high emission scenario (A2) in combination with corresponding climate-specific large wildfire projections. By late century, we found modest changes in the spatial distribution of dominant species by biomass relative to baseline, but extensive changes in recruitment distribution. Although forest recruitment declined across much of the Sierra, we found that projected climate and wildfire favored the recruitment of more drought-tolerant species over less drought-tolerant species relative to baseline, and this change was greatest at mid-elevations. We also found that projected climate and wildfire decreased tree species richness across a large proportion of the study area and transitioned more area to a C source, which reduced landscape-level C sequestration potential. Our study, although a conservative estimate, suggests that by late century, forest community distributions may not change as intact units as predicted by biome-based modeling, but are likely to trend toward simplified community composition as communities gradually disaggregate and the least tolerant species are no longer able to establish. The potential exists for substantial community composition change and forest simplification beyond this century.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85006409724&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85006409724&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/gcb.13544
DO - 10.1111/gcb.13544
M3 - Article
C2 - 27801532
AN - SCOPUS:85006409724
SN - 1354-1013
VL - 23
SP - 2016
EP - 2030
JO - Global Change Biology
JF - Global Change Biology
IS - 5
ER -