PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 47: Insights, challenges, and future directions in modeling forest dynamics at multiple scales
Organizer(s): C Tripler, C Canham, C Messier, and M Papaik
Thursday, August 11, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 510a, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Incorporating ecosystem processes into a spatially interactive disturbance and succession model: A case study of potential climate change effects across a forested landscape.

Scheller, Robert^*,1, Mladenoff, David¹, ¹ Dept. Forest Ecology & Management, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

ABSTRACT- Increasingly, forest managers and the public are requesting regional estimates of long-term (decades to centuries) forest change due to significant ongoing or potential changes in climate and disturbance regimes. Regional estimates of long-term forest change need to include changing species distributions and dynamic ecosystem process rates. Simulated disturbances should reflect feedbacks among species composition, ecosystem process rates, and disturbance probability. We have developed a spatially interactive forest landscape model, LANDIS-II, that includes individual tree species growth rates, biomass accumulation and decomposition, common forest disturbances, and seed dispersal. The model demonstrates the significant compromises necessary for inclusion of ecosystem process rates and spatially dependent processes, such as seed dispersal and disturbance, when simulating a regional landscape. LANDIS-II was applied to northern Wisconsin (USA) forests to estimate the combined effects of climate change, disturbance, and species migrations. Climate change is expected to produce large shifts in tree species distributions and the rates at which individual tree species sequester or release carbon. Disturbances will influence the magnitude and direction of these changes. Three climate scenarios and two disturbance scenarios were simulated for 200 years and aboveground live biomass and tree species composition were estimated. Simulated forest composition, including species richness, was significantly altered by disturbance and climate change. Simulated aboveground live biomass was significantly reduced due to species dispersal and migration limitations. The results also demonstrate how spatially interactive processes and landscape fragmentation will affect the aboveground live biomass and species composition of northern Wisconsin forests. This modeling approach holds promise for estimating changes at a spatial scale and species resolution appropriate for long-term forest management and conservation.

Key words: climate change, forest simulation model, forest disturbance, carbon storage