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Modeling the effects of spatial applications and temporal coordinations of alternative forest management scenarios in a fragmented forestland ownership landscape - Does fragmented forestland ownership lead to a fragmented forest landscape?

Ko, Dong*,1, He, Hong1, Richter, K. Julie1, Lewis, Bernard1, 1 University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, MO, USA

ABSTRACT- The increasing fragmentation of privately-owned forestland in Missouri has been of concern because of its implications for forest landscape dynamics. Highly fragmented forestland ownership may result in spatially fragmented and uncoordinated applications of various forest management practices as landowners may manage their forests differently according to the size of their forestland properties. Although human impacts represent one of the most influential forces on landscape dynamics, the effects of the ownership fragmentation on forest structure and composition are not well known. Our objective is to evaluate the effects of different levels of forestland ownership fragmentation and the spatial implementations of various alternative forest management regimes on forest structure and composition. Based on a survey of private landowners in the southeastern Missouri Ozarks, we derived different sets of forest management scenarios for a variety of parcel size classes. For the spatial implementation of the management scenarios, we developed a spatially stochastic model (FLOSS: Forested Land-Ownership Spatial Simulator) to simulate ownership boundaries of privately-owned forestlands with varying degrees of fragmentation. We then assigned alternative management scenarios to the simulated ownership parcels with various levels of temporal coordinations. These were then used as harvest input parameters for simulations using LANDIS, a spatially explicit forest landscape model. Although landowners with smaller parcel sizes showed less likelihood for active forest management, their influence was noticeable through increased fragmentation of forest structure and cover type. Moreover, this influence was further intensified at higher levels of ownership fragmentation and coordination. However, management on large contiguous parcels, including public forest lands, was the most influential factor in characterizing the overall forest landscape structure and composition, especially the old growth components of the landscape.

Key words: private forestland ownership fragmentation, LANDIS, southeastern Missouri Ozarks, forest management

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