Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change: Early Structural and Compositional Outcomes in northern New England Northern Hardwood Forests

Authors

  • Jessica Wikle University of Vermont, Rubenstein School for Environment and Natural Resources
  • Anthony D’Amato University of Vermont, Rubenstein School for Environment and Natural Resources

Keywords:

climate change, adaptive silviculture, northern hardwood

Abstract

Climate change introduces a suite of unknowns into conditions affecting forest growth, development, and health. Forest managers are in need of strategies for retaining forest integrity in the face of climate change that are regionally relevant and can be incorporated into current silvicultural planning processes. The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change project (ASCC) is an international network designed to examine adaptation strategies to address these changes through operational-scale treatments based on local expertise in forest management. ASCC involves four treatments: no action, resistance, resilience, and transition, representing a gradient of silvicultural approaches with increasing emphasis on adaptation to future climate conditions. We present five-year outcomes of these treatments at the northern hardwood ASCC site with emphasis on how structural complexity and compositional diversity change along the treatment gradient. We found that notable compositional changes were apparent primarily in the young regenerating class, while canopy composition remained similar across treatments. Structural diversity varied among treatments, with each treatment exhibiting unique spatial and canopy structural patterns with important linkages to future adaptation pathways. Our results suggest that management for increased adaptive capacity has immediate outcomes that can be described by  forest structure and more long-term outcomes that will be realized by changing composition of regeneration.

Author Biography

Jessica Wikle, University of Vermont, Rubenstein School for Environment and Natural Resources

Jessica Wikle is a faculty member in the forestry department and manager of the Research Forests at the University of Vermont (UVM). Her research interests include silviculture, climate-adaptive forest management, and forest spatial structure. She is a PhD candidate in UVM’s Silviculture and Applied Forest Ecology Lab, and holds a Master’s of Forest Science from the Yale School of the Environment and Bachelor of Science in Forestry from the University of New Hampshire. Outside of the academic setting, she has worked as a consulting forester, environmental educator, and forestry outreach coordinator

Published

2023-10-31