Multidimensional spatial patterns of vegetation recovery post disturbance

北方森林形成了广阔的环极地地带，覆盖了加拿大、斯堪的纳维亚和西伯利亚的广大地区。这个生物群落提供了自然功能来调节许多大气和水文过程，同时为许多动植物物种提供了栖息地。这些北方森林容易受到广泛的自然干扰（如火、昆虫、风），被有效地描述为形成异质动态景观马赛克。此外，广袤的北方森林是一种可再生的自然资源，可用于大量采伐木材和木材纤维；因此，通过人为影响进一步改变了马赛克。目前的森林管理政策强调在规划森林采伐作业时必须模拟自然干扰。这些立法政策假设北方环境在某种程度上能够更好地从自然干扰中恢复，或者在自然干扰后不受影响地发展。因此，任何人为对景观的改变都应模仿这些可接受的自然干扰。问题仍然是，科学目前不能明确地解释干扰制度之间的生态差异，也不能科学地声称自然干扰比人为干扰对环境更好。本研究旨在发现特定空间格局与生态过程之间的联系，并阐明森林干扰类型之间的差异。如果一个空间模式可以被上下文化为一个空间过程在某一时刻的实现，那么该模式应该包含对开发它的过程的一些洞察。我希望在一个多维的时空框架内探索森林干扰和植被恢复过程所产生的空间格局的分析和比较。研究将整合来自野外工作、卫星成像和空间统计分析的数据。

The boreal forest forms a wide circum-polar swath covering extensive regions of Canada, Scandinavia, and Siberia.  This biome provides natural functioning to regulate numerous atmospheric and hydrologic processes while providing habitat for many species of flora and fauna.  Susceptible to extensive natural disturbances (e.g. fire, insects, wind), these northern forests are effectively described as forming a heterogeneous dynamic landscape mosaic.  Additionally, the vast boreal forest represents a renewable natural resource that results in extensive harvesting operations for extracting timber and wood fiber; thus further altering the mosaic through anthropogenic influences.Current forest management policies stress the requirement of emulating natural disturbances while planning forest-harvesting operations.  Such legislated policies assume that the boreal environment is somehow able to better recover from, or unaffectedly develop following natural disturbances.  Thus, any anthropogenic alterations of the landscape should mimic these acceptable natural disturbances.  The problem remains that science currently cannot unequivocally explain the ecological differences among disturbance regimes nor can they scientifically claim that natural disturbances are better for the environment than are disturbances with anthropogenic origins.  This research has the goal to discover linkages among specific spatial patterns and ecological processes and to elucidate any differences among forest disturbance types.  If a spatial pattern can be contextualized as a realization of a spatial process at an instant in time, then that pattern should contain some insight to the process(es) that developed it.  It is the analysis and comparison of spatial patterns created by forest disturbances and the re-vegetation process that I wish to explore within a multidimensional spatial and temporal framework.  Research will integrate data from fieldwork, satellite imaging, and spatial statistical analysis.