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Climate Adaptive Forest Management: A modeled approach to assessing climate impacts on forest dynamics and adaptive silviculture in Northern New England
Durkin, Will
Durkin, Will
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Abstract
The uncertainty of climate impacts on forested communities offers land managers an opportunity to adapt management tactics to implement alternative, adaptive approaches. In this study, the Western Maine Partnership (WMEP), a regional conservation initiative of five non-profit land trusts, identified five properties, one from each land trust organization, as focal study sites for identifying effective climate adaptive forest management tactics. To aid in the WMEP's management planning process, I assessed each property's initial forest vulnerability and resilience based on species diversity, functional trait diversity, and abundance-weighted adaptability. Adopting a functional diversity framework, where the functional traits of species within a community are considered, is an effective approach in understanding a community's adaptive capacity, or its ability to maintain ecosystem function following a disturbance or climate extreme. Using a spatially-explicit processed-based forest growth model, HETEROFOR, on 16 representative forest types, I simulated forest dynamics under No Management and two climate-adaptive forest management scenarios (Resilience and Transitional) under two future climate pathways (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5) until 2100. I compared species abundance and diversity, climate adaptability, and functional trait diversity over time for each scenario. Findings show that climate change is projected to promote forest productivity of biomass and favor growth and dominance of heat-adapted deciduous tree species, such as red maple, red oak, and American beech. Additionally, projected results suggest that forests under no management decreased in species diversity, functional diversity, and abundance of climate-relevant species traits under future climates. The simulated implementations of adaptive management tactics showed the greatest improvement of future climate adaptability scores, as compared to No Management, in 12 out of the 16 sites. Overall, results varied significantly across sites, reinforcing the importance of accounting for current forest and site conditions in adaptive management planning and implementation.