LTREB: Drivers of temperate forest carbon storage from canopy closure through successional time

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Disturbances to forests, such as logging or wildfires, typically lead to large losses of carbon and nutrients from both the plants and soils of the ecosystem. Virtually all forests are in some state of recovery from such disturbances, whether caused naturally or by humans. Knowledge of the time required for a forest to recover its original amounts of carbon and nutrients after a disturbance is not complete, nor is an understanding of how regrowing plants, recovering soils and the year to year variation in climate interact to control recovery as a forest ages. This project takes advantage of long existing research plots in forests at the University of Michigan Biological Station to figure out how changes in forest structure, carbon and nitrogen contents of the forests, and variations in climate act together through time to influence how fast trees grow, nitrogen is retained, and carbon is captured and stored in forests. Scientists and students will make regular measurements of the types of trees, their stem sizes and mass, their patterns of leaf arrangement, the amounts of carbon and nitrogen in soils, and other factors in five forest that were cut and burned in 1936, 1948, 1954, 1980, and 1998 and so today range from 15 years to 115 years old. Several nearby much older forests will also be sampled. This will let the project link disturbances, climate and ecology for forests that are broadly representative of those across the northern United States, Canada, Europe and Asia.This project will involve students and forest managers in portions of the research and in the application of results to actual forest management. Undergraduate students will help design and carry out regular field measurements of tree and soil properties. Results will be used in general ecology and forest ecosystem courses taken by students at the field station in the summer. Both undergraduate and graduate students will also be able to use the plots and other data to conduct their own research projects. The team will also host site visits and conduct workshops for forest managers in state and federal agencies, as well as those in local conservation groups.