An email sitting in my inbox this morning directed me toward an article in the latest issue of Landscape Ecology that directly addresses one of the issues I touched on in Saturday’s post; the ‘Maple-ization’ of the western UP Northern Hardwood forests via selective forest harvest and the resulting feedbacks with whitetailed deer populations.

Lisa Schulte and colleagues examined the regional-scale impacts of human land use in the northern U.S. Great Lakes region. They found an overall loss of forestland, lower forest species diversity, functional diversity, and structural complexity compared to pre-Euro-American settlement forests.

Generally, they found evidence of shifts from evergreen conifer (-27.0%) to deciduous hardwood (+22.8%) species between pre-Euro-American settlement and the present time. Specifically, they found marked increases in Aspen (+12.8%) and Maple (+10.1%) and decreases in Pine (-17.5%) and Hemlock (-11.3%) across the area as a whole. However, increases in northern hardwood species were not uniform, and Beech and Birch have decreased (~4% each).

A figure from their paper (above) maps the change in ecoregion characteristics for (A) the extent of open vegetation, (B) dominance of conifers, (C) dominance of aspen (combined Populus tremuloides and P. grandidentata), and (D) dominance of maple (combined Acer saccharum and A. rubrum).

In their discussion the authors (p.1100-01) go on to describe the issues present in our study area;

“Although forests have largely been reestablished across northern portions of the region [following destructive logging in the late 19th century], these forests are on a new trajectory of change rather than recovery toward pre-Euro-American conditions . We attribute lack of recovery to legacies associated with the initial, severe land use conversion, the persistent over-abundance of a keystone herbivore (white-tailed deer), and related management practices that are inattentive to processes that historically promoted vegetation diversity within the region.
…
The excessive deer abundance at present is a feedback of regional forest management; whitetailed deer at high densities are now regarded as a major threat to forest biodiversity and regeneration in the region and elsewhere (Rooney et al. 2004). The commercial logging that is now the most frequent and widespread forest disturbance across the region largely fails to mimic either the local or landscape effects of the historically prevalent disturbances of windthrow and fire (Mladenoff et al. 1993; Scheller and Mladenoff 2002). Rather, current practices of aspen clearcutting and single-tree selection in maple stands continues to foster this divergence and simplification of the forests by largely favoring their regeneration over a greater diversity of tree species (Crow et al. 2002).”

As I discussed just the other day, we’ll be using the model we’re currently developing to examine spatial scenarios directly related to this issue. For example one aim is to examine scenarios of forest management that allow the recreation of historical herbivore disturbance via spatial patterns of vegetation whilst ensuring the future economic sustainability of the forests.

Reference
Schulte, L.A., Mladenoff, D.J., Crow, T.R., Merrick, L.C., and Cleland, D.T. (2007) Homogenization of northern U.S. Great Lakes forests due to land use Landscape Ecology 22:7 1089-1103