Collaborative Research: Building Forest Management into Earth System Modeling: Scaling from Stand to Continent

虽然有许多理论解释森林在林分一级的功能，但缺乏对这些理论如何扩展到受不同干扰的更大地区的理解，例如飓风或收获，这些干扰导致环境条件的暂时变化。森林资源的管理一直以生态学理论为指导，这些理论简化了干扰、管理和气候对森林的影响，但很少考虑管理的反馈对功能的影响。这一观察导致了一个重要的问题：如何从米或公里测量的区域的研究知识适用于更异质的区域，其中人类活动正在成为最重要的决定因素的功能反应的干扰？这项拟议的研究旨在开发一个框架，将森林管理纳入地球系统建模，以测试林分水平的生态理论是否适用于美国大陆不同地区的更大区域。 其目标是确定森林管理，气候和干扰的变化如何影响森林生态系统，并量化森林管理，气候和干扰的相对重要性，作为大陆尺度的生态系统结构和功能的驱动因素。初步的空间数据，土地所有权和使用，森林管理，干扰，气候和植被特征，将获得美国的两个地区的重大管理活动：东南部和太平洋西北部。该项目将绘制森林类型上的管理、干扰和环境特征。生态系统模型将被修改和参数化，以产生各种管理和气候情景下的碳，水和森林结构特征的估计，以调查宏观系统的行为是否相似，或作为不同阶段的继承，管理，干扰和气候变化情景的马赛克的集合。这种大陆尺度的分析管理，干扰和气候对森林结构和功能的影响将导致生态学家和森林资源管理人员对改善森林资源的管理。本项目将在制订适当规模确定和管理绘图方法方面作出实质性贡献，并展示管理方法如何影响森林生态。此外，还将制定新的框架和改进措施，以改进现有的生态系统模型。该项目将改进演替的生态理论，以更好地为森林管理提供信息，这将有助于评估森林对气候模式的反馈。将通过外联活动，包括外地讲习班，向森林管理人员提供研究数据产品。该项目的最大意义将是设计新的研究方法，并通过研究生研究和跨学科博士后培训以及多机构实验室轮换，为培养新一代科学家做出贡献。该项目将提高我们对更大规模森林管理与干扰机制和气候变化影响的相互作用的理解，以及管理活动如何减轻其中一些影响。

Although there are many theories that explain how forests function at the stand level, there is a lack of understanding of how these theories scale to larger areas subject to different disturbances, such as hurricanes or harvests, which cause temporary change in environmental conditions. Management of forest resources has been guided by ecological theories that simplify disturbance, management, and climate impacts on forests, but feedbacks from management are seldom considered to influence function. This observation leads to an important question: How does knowledge from studies of areas measured in meters or kilometers apply to much more heterogeneous regional areas, within which human activities are becoming the most significant determinants of functional responses to disturbances? This proposed research aims to develop a framework for building forest management into Earth system modeling to test whether stand-level ecological theories hold in larger areas across different regions of the continental US. The goal is to determine how variations in forest management, climate, and disturbance impact forest ecosystems, and quantify the relative importance of forest management, climate, and disturbance as drivers of ecosystem structure and function at stand to continental scales. Initial spatial data on land ownership and use, forest management, disturbances, climate, and vegetation characteristics will be obtained for two regions of the US with significant management activity: the Southeast and Pacific Northwest. The project will map management, disturbances, and environmental characteristics overlain on forest types. An ecosystem model will be modified and parameterized to generate estimates of carbon, water, and forest structure characteristics under various management and climate scenarios in order to investigate if the macrosystem behaves similarly or as the aggregate of the mosaic of different stages of succession, management, disturbance, and climate change scenarios. This continental-scale analysis of management, disturbance, and climatic effects on forest structure and function will lead ecologists and forest resource managers towards improved stewardship of forest resources. This project will make substantive contributions in developing methods for appropriate scale determination and management mapping, and demonstrate how management methods affect forest ecology. Moreover, new frameworks and improvements will be made to improve existing ecosystem models. This project will improve ecological theory of succession to better inform forest management, which will help in evaluating forest feedbacks on climatic patterns. Research data products will made available to forest managers via outreach activities, including field-based workshops. The greatest significance of this project will be to design new research approaches and contribute to training a new generation of scientists through graduate research and cross-disciplinary post-doctoral training with multi-institution lab rotations. The project will improve our understanding of the interactions of forest management at larger scales with disturbance regimes and climate change influences, as well as how management activities might mitigate some of those influences.