Forest distribution and site quality in southern Lower Michigan, USA

ABSTRACT Aim The primary objectives of this research were to determine whether current forest patches in southern Lower Michigan are a proportionate sample of forest types present in the pre-settlement cover and, if not, to establish the degree to which certain types are over-or under-represented in the contemporary landscape. This determination is useful not only because any conservation policy designed to restore the present forest to pre-settlement biodiversity through preservation of existing stands requires an accurate understanding of the degree to which these stands in sum mirror past forest diversity, but also because it fills a gap in the existing ecological literature. Location The research was conducted within four counties in southern Lower Michigan, USA (Ionia, Livingston, Tuscola and Van Buren). Methods Soil survey data were used to characterize the range of site quality across the study area and the areal extent of each quality category. The geographic locations of all current forest patches in each county were then determined from land use maps and were overlaid on the site quality classification. This procedure yielded the observed distribution of forest relative to site quality. The expected areal extent of forest within each category of site quality on the landscape was determined by assuming a random distribution and multiplying the total area of forestland by the proportion of landscape within each category of site quality. This procedure calculated the expected distribution of forest in terms of site quality by dividing the total forestland among the landscape types, relative to how well represented the landscape types were. The observed and expected distributions were then compared both in terms of absolute difference and normalized difference. Results Overall results indicate that categories of site quality that support a large proportion of the present-day forest patches are generally composed of agriculturally inferior soil and are over-represented with forest. Surviving or reforested tracts are concentrated on inferior types of habitat. Main conclusions Results suggest that the present-day forest patches may not be a proportionate sample of the primeval forest. Rather, they are concentrated on agriculturally-inferior (coarse-textured, steeply-sloped, or poorly-drained) types of habitat. Unless these stands are for some unknown reason compositionally richer than their pre-settlement counterparts, these results suggest that the existing forest resource in southern Lower Michigan is an inferior (biased) sample of the primeval cover. Furthermore, because forest types associated with the most heavily-developed agricultural sites have apparently suffered the most loss of habitat, species more characteristic of these types may have experienced a greater decline in overall importance across the landscape. This study suggests that policy aimed at increasing the potential biodiversity of Land cover disturbance associated with the arrival of European settlers has left the Midwestern United States with a severely altered forest ecosystem The result today is a pattern of altered forest fragments, and plant scientists confront the challenge of determining how and to what degree they resemble the pre-settlement forest. Such a question is significant not only because of academic goals arising out of our need to know about our own environment, but also because conservation policy intended to restore forest biodiversity to pre-settlement levels needs to be informed by solid empirical understanding. Actually, two distinct kinds of questions about the relationship between present and former forests arise, one of which has dominated this area of research. It concerns the composition of the pre-settlement forests and the degree to which present forest remnants resemble them, and approaching it requires inventories not only of present forest resources but also of the prehistoric composition, which necessitates the development of scientific methods that allow us to reliably reconstruct the forests of the past. One way this reconstruction has been attempted is through inference based on fossil pollen deposits. Since the pioneering work of Von Post (1917) and Another way the composition of the historic forests can be estimated is through the use of 'witness trees' from land survey records, following the pioneering work of A second, less-frequently-asked set of questions about the degree of match-up between contemporary forests and their pre-settlement counterparts has to do with the proportion of different forest types across the contemporary landscape vs. the historic condition, and this relationship is the focus of our paper. Questions of this type are relevant to the issue of biodiversity on the total landscape (rather than in particular stands) and arise because evidence suggests that the decisions as to which forests early European settlers removed for agricultural pursuit were systematic rather than random. That is, because some kinds of habitats were (and remain) preferred for farming over others, these kinds were most frequently cleared may also be the last to be abandoned and reforested (as farming in parts of the Midwest has recently declined). From the standpoint of ecological interpretation of present-day forests, such a selective process of clearing would be important if it would affect the degree to which extant forests in aggregate mirror the pre-settlement condition. As intuitive as such an outcome seems, we are aware of no formal scientific treatment of the evidence for such systematic bias in the land-clearing process and/or its impact on the contemporary forest resource. This paper is our attempt to address this deficiency by determining the degree to which the current forest remnants in a portion of the Midwest (southern Lower Michigan) represent the pre-settlement forest, that is, whether they form a proportionate sample of these forests. As Keywords Pre-settlement forest, biodiversity, Michigan P. R. Scull and J. R. Harman 1504 Journal of Biogeography 31, 1503-1514, ª 2004 Blackwell Publishing Ltd unattractive for farming and the forest composition on those sites. If such a linkage could be established, then the resulting pattern of (both remnant and reforested) woodlots would be distributed non-randomly across all possible sites on a landscape, with a clear preference for agriculturally-inferior sites. We seek to determine whether such a pattern is objectively verifiable on the southern Michigan landscape by determining whether various categories of landscape types support both a larger and smaller proportion of the total forest area today than they did prior to European settlement. We think this question is significant because an answer to it might inform conservation strategies geared to enhancing total landscape (not stand) biodiversity. Obviously, the ideal restored (or preserved) forest resource (in terms of biodiversity) will be the one that most closely approximates the proportion of types present in their pre-settlement distribution. One that either over or under-represents the original mix of types would be an inauthentic reproduction. Unless we know both what proportion of the areal coverage of the original forest consisted of what type and to what degree the present cover is a proportionate sample of the various types in that original, programmes designed to promote the indiscriminate preservation of extant forest stands may end up contributing to the development of a contemporary forest cover skewed quite far from the original in terms of the proportion of its component types. BACKGROUN

Human parainfluenza virus serotypes differ in their kinetics of replication and cytokine secretion in human tracheobronchial airway epithelium

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