Published In

Canadian Journal of Forest Research

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-5-2011

Subjects

Forest management, Global environmental change, Ecological disturbances, Analysis of variance

Abstract

We investigated questions about the ability of broad silvicultural strategies to achieve multiple objectives (reduce disturbance losses, maintain the abundance of preferred species, mitigate fragmentation and loss of age-class diversity, and sequester aboveground carbon) under future climate conditions in Siberia. We conducted a factorial experiment using the LANDIS-II landscape disturbance and succession model. Treatments included varying the size and amount of areas cut and the cutting method (selective or clearcut). Simultaneously, the model simulated natural disturbances (fire, wind, insect out-breaks) and forest succession under projected future climate conditions as predicted by an ensemble of global circulation models. The cutting method and cutting rate treatments generally had a large effect on species and age-class composition, residual living biomass, and susceptibility to disturbance, whereas cutblock size had no effect. Cutblock size affected only measures of fragmentation, but cutting method and cutting rate often had an even greater effect. Based on the results, we simulated a “recommended” strategy and compared it with the current forest management practice. The recommended strat-egy resulted in greater forest biomass, increased abundance of favored species, and reduced fragmentation, but it did not sig-nificantly reduce losses by disturbance. No single strategy appears able to achieve all possible forest management objectives.

Rights

Published by NRC Research Press www.nrcresearchpress.com/cjfr. One or more authors of this paper were United States Government employees when contributing to this work and it is not subject to copyright in the United States. This is the publisher’s final pdf.

Description

Published by NRC Research Press www.nrcresearchpress.com/cjfr

One or more authors of this paper were United States Government employees when contributing to this work and it is not subject to copyright in the United States. This is the publisher’s final pdf.

DOI

10.1139/X11-065

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/12446

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