Human demographic trends and landscape level forest management in the northwest Wisconsin Pine Barrens

The effects of landscape pattern on forest ecosystems have been a recent focus in forest science. Forest managers are increasingly considering landscape level processes in their management. Natural disturbance patterns provide one baseline for such management. What has been largely ignored is the pattern of human habitation patterns (i.e., housing), on landscapes. The objective of this study is to discuss landscape level management options for the northwest Wisconsin Pine Barrens based on both landscape ecology and the human demographics of the region. Using the 1990 U.S. Decennial Census we examined current housing density, seasonal housing unit concentration, historic housing density change and projected future housing densities. These data were related to land cover and land ownership data using a GIS. Housing density increase was particularly pronounced in the central Pine Barrens, an area where seasonal housing units are common. Lakes and streams were more abundant in areas that exhibited highest growth. Within national forest lands, 80% of the area contained no housing units. In contrast, only 12% of the area in small private land ownership contained no housing. These results are integrated with previous studies of presettlement vegetation and landscape change to discuss landscape level management suggestions for the Pine Barrens

Improved forest classification in the northern Lake States using multi-temporal Landsat imagery

Forest classifications using single date Landsat data have been only moderately successful in separating forest cover types in the northern Lake States region. Few regional forest classifications have been presented that achieve genus or species level accuracy. We developed a more specific forest cover classification using data from early summer in conjunction with four MSS dates to capture phenological changes of different tree species. Among the 22 forest types classified, multi-temporal image analysis aided in separating 13 types. Of greatest significance, trembling aspen, sugar maple, northern red oak, northern pin oak, black ash, and tamarack were successfully classified. The overall classification accuracy was s83.2 percent and the forest classification accuracy was 80.1 percent. This approach may be useful for broad-scale forest cover monitoring in other areas, particularly where ancillary data layers are not available

Forest landscape change in the northwestern Wisconsin Pine Barrens from pre-European settlement to the present

settlement to the present

Landscape spatial modelling and scenario analysis of Mediterranean forest dynamics under climate change and anthropogenic disturbance conditions for adaptive management in protected areas.

Spatial simulation models can be effectively used to build forest landscape modification scenarios that provide inferences on the coupled effects of climate change and anthropogenic disturbance regimes on tree species distribution and productivity. This kind of inferences are of utmost importance for adaptive sustainable forest planning and are required for biodiversity conservation. We illustrate this through a case study in a protected area in a Mediterranean environment (Southern Italy) where semi- and sub-natural vegetation types, comprised of forests and grasslands, are cast within an agricultural matrix. The parallel dynamics of these two broad categories of semi and sub natural vegetation were modelled over the next 150 years using a forest landscape dynamics simulator (LANDIS-II) under conditions of climate change, two alternative fire regimes (current, severe, and target, attenuated) and current forest management. Quantitative scenario analysis was carried out to assess forest and grasslands modifications in terms of spatial configuration and vegetation characteristics (biomass density and relative woody species composition). Results indicate that a similar pattern of spatial changes in both categories is predicted to occur, whereas the attenuated fire regimes somewhat tempers the qualitative vegetation changes. This seems to depend on the relatively stronger role of severe fire regime than that of forest management in shaping vegetation dynamics. The future site-scale management will most likely be based on the fixed-boundary protected area approach coupled with a resistence strategy to vegetation changes aiming at the conservation of the ecosystem services now provided and valued for by the categories of semi and sub natural vegetation. Our results indicate that current forest management regime will be not appropriate to such a perspective unless a concurrent fire mitigation policy is not carried out. In order to enhance current spatially explicit modelling potentials of LANDIS-II, besides developments aimed at the incorporation of other vegetation types dynamic models, (e.g., grasslands), the integration of modeling and monitoring by means of remote sensing technologies is advocated. This can be critical for protected areas adaptive management, providing early signals of environmental shifts within and outside protected areas

Using settlement vegetation data for paleoclimate and carbon modeling: Preliminary results of the PalEON project

<p>Ecosystem modeling can be improved by testing assumptions about pre-settlement vegetation. PalEON combines historical data with modeling tools, developing robust benchmarks for community structure in the northeastern United States. By building vegetation models to be used with paleo-datasets we help understand drivers of ecosystem change over the last 2000 years in the northeastern United States, improving ecosystem models.</p> <p>Building a detailed map of pre-settlement forest composition from Public Lands Office (PLO) survey data is an initial step. We present a workflow and preliminary results showing pre-settlement stem density and basal area for hard and softwoods in Minnesota and Wisconsin.</p> <p>Preliminary results suggest differences between Ramankutty and Foley (1999) and the PLO data ands provide baseline data for regional biomass estimates.  </p

Effects of Euro-American settlement and historic climate variability on species-climate relationships and the co-occurance of domnant tree species

<p>Poster: American Geophysical Union, 2013</p> <p>To study shifts in forest composition and species-climate relationships we unite data from the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (FIA) and the Public Land Survey System (PLSS; Liu et al., Ecol. Monograph, 2011) with climate records from the last 200+ years.  Differences in composition, taxon co-occurrence, richness and climate occupancy may have profound impacts on our ability to successfully model species distributions.  Modern forests are less diverse than pre-settlement forests and are compositionally dissimilar.  Changes in composition are not uniform across space. Tree genera in hotter drier climates in the Upper Midwest have seen greater range shifts than in the north.</p