Temperate forest resilience in an era of emerging multiple disturbances
Authors: Cantarello, E., Newton, A.C., Martin, P. and Evans, P.
Conference: BES Annual Meeting
Dates: 13-16 December 2015
Abstract:Examining forest resilience is an urgent priority in our current era of rapid anthropogenic changes in climate and environment. Emerging drivers of forest disturbance could lead to catastrophic declines in the provision of the forest ecosystem services humans depend on, as a result of threshold effects. Key issues therefore include the identification of thresholds, which may lead to a transition from forest to non-forest types; the identification of early signs of such transition and the analysis of the interactions between different disturbances affecting forest structure and composition. The New Forest National Park in the south coast of England (UK) has been remarkably resilient as a socio-ecological system, having withstood many mega-disturbances over the past 900 years. However, some elements of this system are currently undergoing major changes in structure and composition, as a result of the co-occurrence of multiple stressors, including climate change, atmospheric pollution and the spread of novel pests and diseases. Fagus sylvatica woodlands appear to be the most affected by these multiple stressors, and have started to show signs of die-back. In this talk I will examine the potential impact of different die-back degrees on the provision of ecosystem services, within the scale of the New Forest woodlands. Research activities included the use of spatially explicit models of ecosystem dynamics (i.e. Landis-II with Century).
Source: Manual