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

合作研究：将森林管理纳入地球系统建模：从林分扩展到大陆

• 批准号: 1241810
• 负责人: Paul Stoy
• 金额: $ 11.46万
• 依托单位: Montana State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-06-01 至 2017-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1241810&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Building; Forest; Management

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.

虽然有许多理论解释森林在林分水平上的功能，但缺乏对这些理论如何扩展到受到不同干扰的更大区域的理解，例如飓风或收获，这些干扰会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，但很少有人认为管理的反馈会影响功能。这一观察引出了一个重要的问题：研究以米或公里为单位的区域的知识如何适用于更加不同的区域，在这些区域内，人类活动正在成为对干扰的功能反应的最重要的决定因素？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范围。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、气候和干扰作为从标准到大陆尺度的生态系统结构和功能驱动因素的相对重要性。将获得美国管理活动显著的两个地区的土地所有权和使用、森林管理、干扰、气候和植被特征的初步空间数据：东南部和太平洋西北部。该项目将绘制覆盖在森林类型上的管理、干扰和环境特征图。生态系统模型将被修改和参数化，以生成在各种管理和气候情景下的碳、水和森林结构特征的估计，以便调查宏观系统的行为是相似的，还是作为不同阶段的演替、管理、干扰和气候变化情景的马赛克的集合。这种对管理、干扰和气候对森林结构和功能影响的大陆尺度分析将引导生态学家和森林资源管理者改进对森林资源的管理。该项目将在制定适当规模确定和管理制图的方法方面做出实质性贡献，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式。该项目将改进生态学演替理论，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，包括实地讲习班，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多机构实验室轮换的跨学科博士后培训，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的森林管理与干扰制度和气候变化影响的相互作用以及管理活动如何减轻其中一些影响的理解。