Treesearch

The North American boreal forest spans over 600 million hectares and includes a diversity of ecosystems and forest communities [1]. The boreal forest reaches its southwestern range limit within the Great Lakes Region (GLR) in the United States (Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, USA) and Canada (Ontario). Within the GLR, one of the dominant southern boreal forest communities is the lowland conifer ecosystem, which has been variously referred to as lowland conifer ecosystem, swamp, bog, peatland, marsh, waabashkiki (Ojibwe), and mashkiig (Ojibwe) [2, 3]. From a European- American perspectiv...

In forestry, the tools to carry out on-the-ground management are found in the toolbox of silviculture, that is, the part of forestry that deals with the development and care of forests. This development and care can be all encompassing, including establishment, growth, composition, health, and quality of trees and stands to meet the diverse needs of society. The planned program of all these activities, spanning the entire life of a forest stand, is termed a silvicultural system. Ostensibly, such a definition for silviculture would seem to recognize most forests, outside of plantations, as...

Red pine (Pinus resinosa Ait.) ecosystems of the western Great Lakes region of United States and Canada are the focus of this chapter. These forests are found in northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in the United States, and portions of southern Ontario, Canada. Historically, because of high economic value of red pine, this ecosystem has been managed using a timber-focused silvicultural system in both plantations and natural-origin stands, generally based on even-aged regeneration systems followed by planting of red pine. The timber-focused model results in composition and structure...

Elements of ecological silviculture have been in existence for over a century [l], yet many of the principles and applications did not emerge broadly until the 1990s (e.g. [2]), with particular emphasis on Douglas-fir-dominated forests of the Pacific Northwest [3]. The chapters in this book highlight how far this silvicultural model has evolved over the past several decades, both in geographic extent and the diversity of forest ecosystems and management contexts for which natural models have been applied. In contrast to generic mischaracterizations of ecological silviculture as solely...

This chapter focuses on the largely oak (Quercus)- dominated forest, woodland, and savanna eco-systems that characterize the Central Hardwoods Region. These ecosystems occur across much of the eastern United States, including five ecoregion provinces (Figure 16.1) [1, 2].The Central Hardwoods Region contains productive agricultural land and a high proportion of the population of the United States. Approximately 75% of the forest land is privately owned [3], exceeding 90% in many states. Fragmentation continues to decrease the size of privately owned forests and woodlands with average area...

The ambient atmospheric environment affects the growth and spread of wildland fires, whereas heat and moisture released from the fires and the reduction of the surface drag in the burned areas can significantly alter local atmospheric conditions. Observational studies on fire–atmosphere interactions have used instrumented towers to collect data during prescribed fires, but a few towers in an operational-scale burn plot (usually >103 m2) have made it extremely challenging to capture the myriad of factors controlling fire–atmosphere interactions, many of which exhibit strong spatial variabili...

Across much of the eastern United States, oak forests are undergoing mesophication as shade-tolerant competitors become more abundant and suppress oak regeneration. Given the historical role of anthropogenic surface fires in promoting oak dominance, prescribed fire has become important in efforts to reverse mesophication and sustain oaks. In 2000 we established the Ohio Hills Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study to examine whether repeated prescribed fire (Fire), mechanical partial harvest (Mech), and their combined application (Mech + Fire) reduced the dominance of subcanopy mesophytic...

Peatlands are sources of bioaccumulating neurotoxin methylmercury (MeHg) that is linked to adverse health outcomes. Yet, the compounding impacts of climate change and reductions in atmospheric pollutants on mercury (Hg) export from peatlands are highly uncertain. We investigated the response in annual flow-weighted concentrations (FWC) and yields of total-Hg (THg) and MeHg to cleaner air and climate change using an unprecedented hydroclimatic (55-year; streamflow, air temperature, precipitation, and peatland water tables), depositional chemistry (21-year; Hg and major ions), and streamwater...

Organic peat soils occupy relatively little of the global land surface area but store vast amounts of soil carbon in northern latitudes where climate is warming at a rapid pace. Warming may result in strong positive feedbacks of carbon loss and global climate change driven by microbial processes if warming alters the balance between primary productivity and decomposition. To elucidate effects of warming on the microbial communities mediating peat carbon dynamics, we explored the abundance of broad microbial groups and their source of carbon (i.e. old carbon versus more recently fixed...

Climate change is reducing the amount, duration, and extent of snow across high‐latitude ecosystems. But, in landscapes where persistent winter snow cover develops, experimental platforms to specifically investigate interactions between warming and changes in snowpack, and impacts on ecosystem processes, have been lacking. We leveraged a whole‐ecosystem warming experiment in a boreal peatland forest to quantify how snow duration, depth, and fractional cover vary with warming of up to +9°C. We found that every snow‐related quantity we examined declined precipitously as the amount of warming...