Long-Term Ecological Research at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (LTER4)

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Swanson 9632921 The central question guiding the HJ Andrews LTER is: How do land use, natural disturbances and climate change affect three key ecosystem properties: carbon dynamics, biodiversity, and hydrology? These three ecosystem properties are of high scientific and social interest and represent three rather different categories of ecological response to landscape patterns. The principle spatial scale for synthesizing results of these studies is the Andrews Forest landscape (6400 ha) and the adjacent upper Blue River watershed (9000 ha). The time scale of interest spans the past 500 yrs and extends several centuries into the future, based on model projections of alternative possible future conditions. LTER studies link closely with work at larger spatial scales and paleoecological time scales. This research follows a strategic plan to answer this guiding question by continuing to use the Andrews LTER as the core of the large, multi-faceted research program based at Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon. Since its inception in 1980, the Andrews Forest LTER program has consisted of long-term experiments, measurement programs, short-term studies and modeling analyses in a series of research components: climate, hydrology, disturbance regimes/landscape dynamics, vegetation succession, biological diversity, carbon and nutrient dynamics, and forest-stream interactions. Under this renewal proposal, four related synthesis efforts will take place: effects of species on ecosystem functioning, pattern and process during early succession, analysis of small watersheds, and analysis of landscape dynamics. Research under the continuation of this LTER activity will advance scientific understanding of controls on ecosystem structure and function in the forested landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.