Mapping Past, Present, and Future Hydro-Ecology, Fire, and Vegetation for Oak Ecosystem Restoration

Fire-maintained woodlands and savannas in the east-central US have declined in area and quality or disappeared since Euro-American settlement, resulting in forest regeneration bottlenecks, loss of herbaceous communities, and wildlife habitat degradation and declines. Substantial resources are being devoted to restoring fire-maintained woodland and savanna systems across the broad climate and vegetation gradient from the Appalachians to the Ozark Highlands.

 At a management scale (e.g., individual slopes), terrain-driven hydro-ecological processes are important determinants of vegetation characteristics. Often, diverse pre-settlement vegetation that was created and maintained to a greater or lesser extent by Native American fire management serves as the desired condition. Overlying the regional variations in topography, precipitation, and temperature, is climate change, that will, in part, determine whether desired conditions are feasible in any given place, how desired conditions may shift across the region, and whether novel communities are likely to form. 

Uncertainties about historical fire and vegetation conditions and how ecosystems will change in the future lead to uncertainties in defining desired conditions. Land managers need tools and resources to help inform management decision-making. 

This project is funded by the Joint Fire Science Program.

Approach

This project will use a combination of process-based hydro-ecological modeling and a topographically-resolved historical vegetation and fire database to improve the quality of the information that is used to define and communicate restoration objectives. Project area covers a broad region from the Central Appalachians west to the prairie-forest border. Research study sites will be on the Monongahela, Wayne, Hoosier, Shawnee, and Mark Twain National Forests. 

This project will be co-produced with USFS Region 9 staff and serve to advance the Southern Tier Oak Restoration Initiative project. The project addresses the following questions: 

• What were fire regimes before Euro-American settlement, particularly in parts of the region where fire history studies have not been conducted to date? 

• What did fire-maintained vegetation from that time look like in terms of structure (closed-canopy, woodland, or savanna) and herbaceous composition (woody-, forb-, or grass-dominated)? 

• How do the desired conditions that guide management compare with new historical fire and vegetation data and are desired conditions feasible considering future climate change?

Expected Outcomes

This project weaves knowledge co-production at the very beginning with researchers and land managers working side by side to identify a problem and work toward a solution. A major outcome of this project is to highlight the coordinated work of the Southern Tier Oak Restoration Initiative project. 

This project will strengthen the foundation for land and fire management decision-making, both in terms of improved knowledge about historical fire and vegetation conditions and new analyses and methodologies for anticipating future changes due to climate change. This improved information will help land managers, especially the multiple national forests across the Appalachians to the Ozarks, as they formulate and justify their management activities to their constituencies, including other land managers, interest groups, and the public at large.