Date of Award

Fall 12-15-2023

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Forest Resources

Advisor

Jay Wason

Second Committee Member

Jessica Leahy

Third Committee Member

Nicole Rogers

Abstract

Forests provide numerous ecological and socio-economic benefits, yet climate change is creating novel and extreme conditions that threaten forests and disrupt traditional management practices. To address future uncertainty about how to manage forests amid a rapidly changing climate, researchers have developed adaptive management strategies that move away from using historical ecological baselines as management goals. However, despite increases in adaptive forest management frameworks, there are still concerns that private woodland owners (PWOs; also known as family forest owners or non-industrial private landowners) are not adopting beneficial practices. Additionally, since tree canopies often buffer understory microclimates (i.e., fine scale variation in temperature and moisture) from macroclimate extremes that occur outside of forests, there is growing interest in how forest management can be used to target specific microclimate conditions. Therefore, in order to improve forest management planning, we need to better understand how adaptive strategies can best be implemented with PWOs, in addition to understanding mechanistic links between forest management and understory conditions.

Private woodland owners represent the largest portion of national forest ownership; however, evidence suggests there may be disconnects between their climate change perceptions and behaviors, which can limit implementation of climate-focused management. We interviewed PWOs about their views of climate change and adaptive management practices, then developed a typological framework that highlights the importance of assessing their perceptions of climate-induced threats as well as their feelings of efficacy in addressing such threats. This framework can be used when targeting communications to PWOs regarding the overlap between climate adaptive management and traditional best management practices.

Forest management operations that alter stand structure to achieve silvicultural objectives can have profound effects on understory temperature and moisture, which can in turn shape long-term stand development by promoting regeneration of certain plant species that are well suited to the microclimate conditions at a given site. We used a combination of airborne laser scanning, field-based climate data loggers, and ground-based forest measurements to demonstrate that forest structure and composition play a major role in shaping understory microclimates across spatial scales spanning the plot, stand, and landscape levels. Therefore, considering the impacts to microclimate accompanied by changes in forest structure widens the purview of forest management planning aimed at promoting adaptation and resilience to climate change.

Some silvicultural prescriptions involving prescribed fire rely on predicting understory microclimate and dead fuel moisture within a stand, which can be difficult due to high variability in these dynamic drivers of fire behavior. In this study, we used terrestrial laser scanning, field-based climate data loggers, fuel moisture sticks, and forest inventory measurements to show that forest cover buffers microclimate and increases dead fuel moisture. This research enhances fire managers’ ability to plan and implement fuel treatments by highlighting how changes in forest stand structure affect fuel availability at fine scales.

Together, these studies highlight the inherent connections between management decisions and forest resilience by considering the social factors that affect decision making as well as the biophysical interactions that occur between forest stands and climate conditions near the ground.

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