Emulating Natural Forest Landscape Disturbances

What is a natural forest disturbance? How well do we understand natural forest disturbances and how might we emulate them in forest management? What role does emulation play in forest management? Representing a range of geographic perspectives from across Canada and the United States, this book looks at the escalating public debate on the viability of natural disturbance emulation for sustaining forest landscapes from the perspective of policymakers, forestry professionals, academics, and conservationists. This book provides a scientific foundation for justifying the use of and a solid framework for examining the ambiguities inherent in emulating natural forest landscape disturbance. It acknowledges the divergent expectations that practitioners face and offers a balanced view of the promises and challenges associated with applying this emerging forest management paradigm. The first section examines foundational concepts, addressing questions of what emulation involves and what ecological reasoning substantiates it. These include a broad overview, a detailed review of emerging forest management paradigms and their global context, and an examination of the ecological premise for emulating natural disturbance. This section also explores the current understanding of natural disturbance regimes, including the two most prevalent in North America: fire and insects. The second section uses case studies from a wide geographical range to address the characterization of natural disturbances and the development of applied templates for their emulation through forest management. The emphasis on fire regimes in this section reflects the greater focus that has traditionally been placed on understanding and managing fire, compared with other forms of disturbance, and utilizes several viewpoints to address the lessons learned from historical disturbance patterns. Reflecting on current thinking in the field, immediate challenges, and potential directions, the final section moves deeper into the issues of practical applications by exploring the expectations for and feasibility of emulating natural disturbance through forest management.

This publication is a compendium of summaries of presentations from a symposium that discussed the concepts, challenges, and potential consequences of implementing emulation of natural forest landscape disturbances at the landscape level in forest management. The first set of presentations covers such topics as predicting natural forest disturbances, predicting fire regimes and forest insect disturbance regimes, silvicultural concepts, the ecological basis for emulation, boreal forest management, and the economics of emulation forestry. The second set presents case studies from across northern & central North America to illustrate some practical applications of the concepts behind emulation of natural forest landscape disturbances.

"This book provides a scientific foundation for justifying the use of and a solid framework for examining the ambiguities inherent in emulating natural forest landscape disturbance. It acknowledges the divergent expectations that practitioners face and offers a balanced-view of the promises and challenges associated with applying this emerging forest management paradigm."--BOOK JACKET.

Ontario's "Forest management guide for natural disturbance pattern emulation" provides direction for emulating natural fire disturbances in forest management planning. This report examines the North American scientific literature on natural fire disturbances in relation to the directions in this guide for: landscape harvest size patterns; landscape harvest patch separation; residual stands; and residual trees & downed woody debris. Gaps in the published knowledge are identified. An annotated bibliography of the literature reviewed for the report is included.

Forest landscape disturbances are a global phenomenon. Simulation models are an important tool in understanding these broad scale processes and exploring their effects on forest ecosystems. This book contains a collection of insights from a group of ecologists who address a variety of processes: physical disturbances such as drought, wind, and fire; biological disturbances such as defoliating insects and bark beetles; anthropogenic influences; interactions among disturbances; effects of climate change on disturbances; and the recovery of forest landscapes from disturbances—all from a simulation modeling perspective. These discussions and examples offer a broad synopsis of the state of this rapidly evolving subject.

Large and intense wildfires are integral to the globally important boreal forest biome. While much is known about boreal wildfires, the focus on forest remnants that either escape or survive these intense fires is a recent phenomenon: academics now study ecological processes of wildfire residuals, forest policymakers use their patterns to design harvest strategies, forest managers consider their economic value, and conservationists recognize their intrinsic ecological importance. Ecology of Wildfire Residuals in Boreal Forests is the first book to explore ecological patterns and processes of what does not burn within boreal wildfires. Following a brief introduction to the boreal forest biome, it discusses the processes that form wildfire residuals; how they are studied, with various approaches and methods; the types, extent, and ecological functions of wildfire residuals; and their role in forest management applications, all in the context of ecological scale. This book is a reference for researchers and graduate students studying boreal forest ecology, as well as for policymakers and forest managers. It adopts a non-reductionist perspective that will be of interest to scientists from conservation science, forest ecology, forest management, and timber production. Brings together fire behaviour, ecological scale, vegetation ecology, and conservation biology to provide a cross disciplinary, multi-scale, and an integrative discussion of forest fire residuals Captures the state of knowledge with a meta-analysis of research trends during the past few decades, with a comprehensive review of the literature, a compilation of key references, and a list of key topics relevant to the study of boreal wildfire residuals Identifies the major gaps and uncertainties in the present body of knowledge, including a critique of study techniques and reporting practices to date, and proposes a set of terms and definitions and a list of research questions and priorities Includes the authors’ observations and research experience from boreal Canada, and information extracted from interactions with North American and European ecologists, forest managers, and conservationists

Climate change, urban sprawl, abandonment of agriculture, intensification of forestry and agriculture, changes in energy generation and use, expansion of infrastructure networks, habitat destruction and degradation, and other drivers of change occur at increasing rates. They affect patterns and processes in forest landscapes, and modify ecosystem services derived from those ecosystems. Consequently, rapidly changing landscapes present many new challenges to scientists and managers. While it is not uncommon to encounter the terms “global change” and “landscape” together in the ecological literature, a global analyses of drivers of change in forest landscapes, and their ecological consequences have not been addressed adequately. That is the goal of this volume: an exploration of the state of knowledge of global changes in forested landscapes with emphasis on causes and effects, and challenges faced by researchers and land managers. Initial chapters identify and describe major agents of landscape change: climate, fire, and human activities. The next series of chapters address implications of changes on ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation and carbon flux. A chapter that describes methodologies of detecting and monitoring landscape changes is presented followed by chapter that highlights the many challenges forest landscape managers face amidst of global change. Finally, we present a summary and a synthesis of the main points presented in the book. Each chapter will contain the individual research experiences of chapter authors, augmented by review and synthesis of global scientific literature on relevant topics, as well as critical input from multiple peer reviewers.

Landscape ecology has generated a wealth of knowledge that could enhance forest policy, but little of this knowledge has found its way into practice. This the first book to introduce landscape ecologists to the discipline of knowledge transfer. The book considers knowledge transfer in general, critically examines aspects that are unique to forest landscape ecology, and reviews case studies of successful applications for policy developers and forest managers in North America.