Nicholas A. Povak

Restoring fire-prone Inland Pacific landscapes: seven core principles

ContextMore than a century of forest and fire management of Inland Pacific landscapes has transformed their successional and disturbance dynamics. Regional connectivity of many terrestrial and aquatic habitats is fragmented, flows of some ecological and physical processes have been altered in space and time, and the frequency, size and intensity of many disturbances that configure these habitats have been altered. Current efforts to address these impacts yield a small footprint in comparison to wildfires and insect outbreaks. Moreover, many current projects emphasize thinning and fuels reduction within individual forest stands, while overlooking large-scale habitat connectivity and disturbance flow issues.MethodsWe provide a framework for landscape restoration, offering seven principles. We discuss their implication for management, and illustrate their application with examples.ResultsHistorical forests were spatially heterogeneous at multiple scales. Heterogeneity was the result of variability and interactions among native ecological patterns and processes, including successional and disturbance processes regulated by climatic and topographic drivers. Native flora and fauna were adapted to these conditions, which conferred a measure of resilience to variability in climate and recurrent contagious disturbances.ConclusionsTo restore key characteristics of this resilience to current landscapes, planning and management are needed at ecoregion, local landscape, successional patch, and tree neighborhood scales. Restoration that works effectively across ownerships and allocations will require active thinking about landscapes as socio-ecological systems that provide services to people within the finite capacities of ecosystems. We focus attention on landscape-level prescriptions as foundational to restoration planning and execution.

A foundation tree at the precipice: Tsuga canadensis health after the arrival of Adelges tsugae in central New England

Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) plays a unique role in Eastern forests, producing distinctive biogeochemical, habitat, and microclimatic conditions and yet has begun a potentially irreversible decline due to the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae; HWA) that causes foliar damage, crown loss, and mortality of host trees. Understanding the regional, landscape, site, and stand factors influencing HWA spread and impact is critical for predicting future landscape dynamics and directing effective management. Using aerial photographs, we documented hemlock distribution throughout central Massachusetts and subsampled 123 stands to examine the spatial pattern of HWA and its impact on tree vigor and mortality since its arrival in 1989. In the study region, over 86,000 ha of hemlock forest were mapped in 5,127 stands. White pine (Pinus strobus), red oak (Quercus rubra), red maple (Acer rubrum), and black birch (Betula lenta) were common overstory associates. Hemlock abundance increased from south to north, commonly on western and northwestern slopes. Average stand size was 55 ha, overstory basal area ranged from 23 to 55 m2 ha−1 and overstory stem densities averaged 993 ha−1. By 2004, 40% of sampled stands were infested, but most stands remained in good health overall; only 8 stands contained high HWA densities and only two had lost >50% overstory hemlock. Out of fifteen stand and landscape predictor variables examined, only latitude and winter climate variables were related to HWA density. Cold temperatures appear to be slowing the spread and impact of HWA at its northern extent as HWA infestation intensity and hemlock mortality and vigor were significantly correlated with average minimum winter temperature. Contrary to predictions, there was no regional increase in hemlock harvesting. The results suggest that regional HWA-hemlock dynamics are currently being shaped more by climate than by a combination of landscape and social factors. The persistence and migration of HWA continues to pose a significant threat regionally, especially in the northern portion of the study area, where hemlock dominates many forests.

Native Fire Regimes and Landscape Resilience

First introduced by Holling (1973), the term “resilience” has been used widely in the ecological literature, but it is not always defined and is rarely quantified. Holling suggested that ecological resilience is the amount of disturbance that an ecosystem could withstand without changing self-organized processes and structures. His description suggests that resilience may be: (1) represented by an observable set of properties; (2) defined by measures of degree; and (3) related to system states and their (in)tolerance to reshaping, and that some properties of resilience may be quantifiable. We also see the idea of fire resilience in the literature (e.g., MacGillivray and Grime 1995; He and Mladenoff 1999; Diaz-Delgado et al. 2002; Brown et al. 2004; Pausas et al. 2004), but this term has different meanings in diverse contexts.

Evidence of fuels management and fire weather influencing fire severity in an extreme fire event

Following changes in vegetation structure and pattern, along with a changing climate, large wildfire incidence has increased in forests throughout the western United States. Given this increase, there is great interest in whether fuels treatments and previous wildfire can alter fire severity patterns in large wildfires. We assessed the relative influence of previous fuels treatments (including wildfire), fire weather, vegetation, and water balance on fire-severity in the Rim Fire of 2013. We did this at three different spatial scales to investigate whether the influences on fire severity changed across scales. Both fuels treatments and previous low to moderate-severity wildfire reduced the prevalence of high-severity fire. In general, areas without recent fuels treatments and areas that previously burned at high severity tended to have a greater proportion of high-severity fire in the Rim Fire. Areas treated with prescribed fire, especially when combined with thinning, had the lowest proportions of high severity. The proportion of the landscape burned at high severity was most strongly influenced by fire weather and proportional area previously treated for fuels or burned by low to moderate severity wildfire. The proportion treated needed to effectively reduce the amount of high severity fire varied by spatial scale of analysis, with smaller spatial scales requiring a greater proportion treated to see an effect on fire severity. When moderate and high-severity fire encountered a previously treated area, fire severity was significantly reduced in the treated area relative to the adjacent untreated area. Our results show that fuels treatments and low to moderate-severity wildfire can reduce fire severity in a subsequent wildfire, even when burning under fire growth conditions. These results serve as further evidence that both fuels treatments and lower severity wildfire can increase forest resilience.

Downstream Warming and Headwater Acidity May Diminish Coldwater Habitat in Southern Appalachian Mountain Streams

Stream-dwelling species in the U.S. southern Appalachian Mountains region are particularly vulnerable to climate change and acidification. The objectives of this study were to quantify the spatial extent of contemporary suitable habitat for acid- and thermally sensitive aquatic species and to forecast future habitat loss resulting from expected temperature increases on national forest lands in the southern Appalachian Mountain region. The goal of this study was to help watershed managers identify and assess stream reaches that are potentially vulnerable to warming, acidification, or both. To our knowledge, these results represent the first regional assessment of aquatic habitat suitability with respect to the combined effects of stream water temperature and acid-base status in the United States. Statistical models were developed to predict July mean daily maximum water temperatures and air-water temperature relations to determine potential changes in future stream water temperatures. The length of stream considered suitable habitat for acid- and thermally sensitive species, based on temperature and acid neutralizing capacity thresholds of 20°C and 50 μeq/L, was variable throughout the national forests considered. Stream length displaying temperature above 20°C was generally more than five times greater than the length predicted to have acid neutralizing capacity below 50 μeq/L. It was uncommon for these two stressors to occur within the same stream segment. Results suggested that species’ distributional shifts to colder, higher elevation habitats under a warming climate can be constrained by acidification of headwater streams. The approach used in this study can be applied to evaluate climate change impacts to stream water resources in other regions.

Machine learning and linear regression models to predict catchment‐level base cation weathering rates across the southern Appalachian Mountain region, USA

Accurate estimates of soil mineral weathering are required for regional critical load (CL) modeling to identify ecosystems at risk of the deleterious effects from acidification. Within a correlative modeling framework, we used modeled catchment-level base cation weathering (BCw) as the response variable to identify key environmental correlates and predict a continuous map of BCw within the southern Appalachian Mountain region. More than 50 initial candidate predictor variables were submitted to a variety of conventional and machine learning regression models. Predictors included aspects of the underlying geology, soils, geomorphology, climate, topographic context, and acidic deposition rates. Low BCw rates were predicted in catchments with low precipitation, siliceous lithology, low soil clay, nitrogen and organic matter contents, and relatively high levels of canopy cover in mixed deciduous and coniferous forest types. Machine learning approaches, particularly random forest modeling, significantly improved model prediction of catchment-level BCw rates over traditional linear regression, with higher model accuracy and lower error rates. Our results confirmed findings from other studies, but also identified several influential climatic predictor variables, interactions, and nonlinearities among the predictors. Results reported here will be used to support regional sulfur critical loads modeling to identify areas impacted by industrially derived atmospheric S inputs. These methods are readily adapted to other regions where accurate CL estimates are required over broad spatial extents to inform policy and management decisions.

Steady-state sulfur critical loads and exceedances for protection of aquatic ecosystems in the U.S. southern Appalachian Mountains

Atmospherically deposited sulfur (S) causes stream water acidification throughout the eastern U.S. Southern Appalachian Mountain (SAM) region. Acidification has been linked with reduced fitness and richness of aquatic species and changes to benthic communities. Maintaining acid-base chemistry that supports native biota depends largely on balancing acidic deposition with the natural resupply of base cations. Stream water acid neutralizing capacity (ANC) is maintained by base cations that mostly originate from weathering of surrounding lithologies. When ambient atmospheric S deposition exceeds the critical load (CL) an ecosystem can tolerate, stream water chemistry may become lethal to biota. This work links statistical predictions of ANC and base cation weathering for streams and watersheds of the SAM region with a steady-state model to estimate CLs and exceedances. Results showed that 20.1% of the total length of study region streams displayed ANC <100 μeq∙L(-1), a level at which effects to biota may be anticipated; most were 4th or lower order streams. Nearly one-third of the stream length within the study region exhibited CLs of S deposition <50 meq∙m(-2)∙yr(-1), which is less than the regional average S deposition of 60 meq∙m(-2)∙yr(-1). Owing to their geologic substrates, relatively high elevation, and cool and moist forested conditions, the percentage of stream length in exceedance was highest for mountain wilderness areas and in national parks, and lowest for privately owned valley bottom land. Exceedance results were summarized by 12-digit hydrologic unit code (subwatershed) for use in developing management goals and policy objectives, and for long-term monitoring.

Spatial Decision Support for Assessing Impacts of Atmospheric Sulfur Deposition on Aquatic Ecosystems in the Southern Appalachian Region

We present foundational work on the use of niche modeling to predict continuous surfaces of acid neutralizing capacity (ANC) and base cation weathering (BCw) within the southern Appalachian Mountain Region of the United States. Predicted ANC and BCw surfaces are subsequently used to estimate steady-state critical loads (CLs) of atmospheric sulfur deposition. We then present a logic-based model for assessing aquatic environmental effects of sulfur deposition throughout the region based on modeled stream ANC and CL exceedance, and demonstrate application of the logic model in a spatial decision-support system, presenting mapped model results for Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Whereas CLs were uniformly high within the Park area, degree of aquatic impact within watersheds was strongly associated with increasing elevation. The niche and spatial decision support modeling approaches are readily customized for other regions of interest.

Applying historical range of variability concepts

J.A. Weins, G.D. Hayward, H.D. Safford, and C.M Giffen (eds.), HistoricalEnvironmental Variation in Conservation and Natural Resource Management.Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex, UK, 2012, 352 pp. illus., maps. Cloth, USD

Landscape-scale effects of fire severity on mixed-conifer and red fir forest structure in Yosemite National Park

176,ISBN 978-1-4443-3792-1; Paper, USD