Published In
Climatic Change
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2017
Subjects
Conifer forests -- Effect of global warming on, Ecosystem services, Climatic changes, Environmental impact analysis
Abstract
While ecosystem services and climate change are often examined independently, quantitative assessments integrating these fields are needed to inform future land management decisions. Using climate-informed state-and-transition simulations, we examined projected trends and trade-offs for a suite of ecosystem services under four climate change scenarios and two management scenarios (active management emphasizing fuel treatments and no management other than fire suppression) in a fire-prone landscape of dry and moist mixed-conifer forests in central Oregon, USA. Focal ecosystem services included fire potential (regulating service), timber volume (provisioning service), and potential wildlife habitat (supporting service). Projections without climate change suggested active management in dry mixed-conifer forests would create more open forest structures, reduce crown fire potential, and maintain timber stocks, while in moist mixed-conifer forests, active management would
reduce crown fire potential but at the expense of timber stocks. When climate change was considered, however, trends in most ecosystem services changed substantially, with large increases in wildfire area predominating broad-scale trends in outputs, regardless of management approach (e.g., strong declines in timber stocks and habitat for closed-forest wildlife species). Active management still had an influence under a changing climate, but as a moderator of the strong climate-driven trends rather than being a principal driver of ecosystem service outputs. These results suggest projections of future ecosystem services that do not consider climate change may result in unrealistic expectations of benefits.
DOI
10.1007/s10584-017-1925-0
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/20067
Citation Details
Halofsky, J. S., Halofsky, J. E., Hemstrom, M. A., Morzillo, A. T., Zhou, X., & Donato, D. C. (2017). Divergent trends in ecosystem services under different climate-management futures in a fire-prone forest landscape. Climatic Change, 142(1-2), 83-95.
Description
To the best of our knowledge, this work was authored as part of the Contributor's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Originally published by Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-1925-0