Collaborative Proposal: MSB-FRA: The future of US forest function under changing environment, disturbance, and forest management

世界上大多数森林被管理来提供商品和服务，如木材产品、生物多样性保护和水净化，并在调节区域和当地天气方面发挥重要作用。森林管理是森林变化的最广泛和最持续的驱动因素之一，影响到相关动植物群落的成功，以及水的捕获、移动和储存模式，以供未来人类消费。该项目旨在了解森林管理决策如何影响森林的长期健康及其在整个美国从区域到大陆范围内提供的服务。该项目将使用测绘和计算机建模方法，评估国家和地区的森林管理政策、环境干扰以及由此产生的生态、社会和经济后果。利用卫星技术，将在与国家和地区政策相关的尺度上为整个美国的森林绘制森林管理类型地图，并了解与环境的相互作用。这些地图将为计算机模型提供信息，以在各种管理和环境情景下生成对碳封存、水和森林特征的估计。在这些非常广泛的尺度上运行的地球系统模型(ESM)将通过纳入森林管理和干扰而得到改进，从而能够更好地预测不断变化的管理政策、干扰制度和环境对美国大陆和阿拉斯加森林的影响。这一计算机模拟框架将用于测试不同环境条件下森林管理的相对重要性，并按区域评估这些关系在确定森林特征变化(例如，物种组成和大小结构)及其提供的服务方面的强度，从林分到大陆。这项建议的一个关键组成部分是评估森林政策变化的影响及其相对于环境对森林状况的直接变化的相对重要性，特别是在物种适应和减缓变化战略方面。随着该项目的发展，对社会经济的理解将允许将调查结果纳入相关政策和管理。这种增加的知识将帮助未来的决策者评估对经济和社会具有重要意义的潜在变化。

Most forests of the world are managed to provide goods and services, such as wood products, biodiversity protection, and water purification and play an important role in regulating regional and local weather. Forest management is one of the most extensive and continual drivers of forest change affecting the success of associated communities of plants and animals, as well as the patterns of water capture, movement, and storage for future human consumption. This project seeks to understand how forest management decisions influence the long-term health of forests and the services they provide across regional to continental scales across the United States. Using a mapping and computer modeling approaches, the project will evaluate national and regional forest management policies, environmental disturbances, and resulting ecological, social, and economic consequences.Using satellite technology, maps of forest management types will be developed for forests across the entire US at scales relevant for national and regional policy, and for understanding interactions with the environment. These maps will inform computer models to generate estimates of carbon sequestration, water, and forest characteristics under various management and environmental scenarios. Earth systems models (ESMs), which operate at these very broad scales, will be improved by incorporating forest management and disturbances, allowing better predictions of the effects of changing management policy, disturbance regimes, and environment on forests across the continental US and Alaska. This computer modeling framework will be used to test the relative importance of forest management across environmental conditions and assess the strength of these relationships by region in determining change in forest characteristics (e.g., species composition and size structure), and the services they provide across scales from stands to the continent. A key component of this proposal is evaluating the impacts of changing forest policies and their relative importance in comparison to direct changes in forest condition from the environment, especially in regards to species adaptation and change mitigation strategies. The socioeconomic understanding developed with this project will permit the integration of findings into relevant policy and management. This increased knowledge will assist future decision makers in evaluating potential changes that are economically and socially important.