- Welcome, everyone, to the second day
of the FEMC conference.
I know there were some challenges
with getting into the Zoom events platform yesterday.
So thanks to everyone for sticking with it.
And I hope that you found, once in there,
it's actually been a pretty easy way
to navigate this online meeting.
Yesterday, we started with a deep dive
into the nature of stewardship groups and their supporters
working at scales from the individual to the national,
to do two really important functions,
to meet the ongoing and basic needs
of their communities and their environment.
And they also pivot or span
to respond to disruptions and change.
But then they return to keep the original work going too.
I see a lot of parallels
between how we utilize both monitoring and research,
and in the forest systems we all work in.
And I imagine you do too.
So while yesterday,
we talked a lot about how communities and groups of humans
respond to disruption and change,
today we're gonna dive into communities of forest plants
to think more broadly about disturbance
and change in these systems
of overlapping and complementary functions.
To take us on this journey,
it's my pleasure to welcome up to the zoomodium,
Dr. Julia Burton.
Julia, sorry, an associate professor
at Michigan Technological University,
and an adjunct associate professor
at SUNY College of Environmental Science and forestry,
and her team examines the role of silviculture
in sustaining a broad range of values,
functions and services in forests,
such as carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat,
biodiversity, and cultural values,
as well as timber production.
And they look at how to sustain these
in the face of changes in climate and disturbance regimes.
Her recent work looks at how plant functional traits
can illuminate forest community responses to climate change
and how these changes cascade
to ecosystem functions and services.
This research clearly has real-world implications
for those of us who are working in agencies
or with landowners, for conservation organizations
who are tasked with managing forest
for a range of ecosystem services
in an increasingly uncertain world.
And I'm thrilled to have her speak to us today
on the topic of forest ecosystem change
through the lens of plant functional traits,
measurement, management, and monitoring.
Julia, welcome.
- Thank you so much.
Let's see. I'm gonna get my screen shared here.
How's that?
- Looks great. - Great.
Well, good morning, everyone.
And thanks so much for being here.
It's an honor for me to be here speaking with you today,
and I really appreciate the invitation
and the recommendation of Colin Beier,
my colleague at SUNY ESF.
I very much enjoyed the sessions yesterday,
the plenary presentation from Erica
and all the contributed presentations and the workshop.
Everything has been really great.
I haven't participated in this conference before,
so I'm just really impressed
by what you've all put together.
And I've enjoyed seeing what everyone's up to
and learning from your all.
I'm also really excited to share
a little about the work I do
with my students and collaborators.
And so for this talk, I thought I would focus
on looking at the issues that we've been discussing
through the lens of plant functional traits.
Forests provide a very broad range of values and services,
and we're increasingly managing forests
for this broader range of values and services,
from raw materials for the many wood products we rely on,
to wildlife habitat and recreational and spiritual values.
And Erica really touched on those values yesterday.
And I think that this pandemic has made us,
provided a heightened awareness of these values
that we should learn from and leverage.
And we're currently facing changes
in climate and disturbance
that work together to influence forest composition,
density and structure,
as well as those ecosystem services
that we rely on.
And these changes in climate lead to an increase
in managing forests to offset greenhouse gas emissions
and mitigate climate change.
And at the same time,
climate change threatens the ability of forests to do this.
So of course, we're concerned.
Silvicultural management can be used,
can provide a powerful tool for managing change,
so as to continue to provide these services that we value
despite changes in species composition and structure.
And to leverage this silvicultural toolbox,
we really need to draw on a mechanistic understanding
of how climate change influences
plant communities and forests,
and how community structure
is related to ecosystem services.
And so in order to do this, one way to do this
is to look at forest communities and ecosystems
through the lens of plant functional traits.
And so we can define a plant trait
as any characteristic of a plant,
and a functional trait is a trait that influences
or is related to the performance of that plant.
And I apologize for the red green here,
but these hump-shaped curves are
the distribution of species abundance
for some hypothetical species along a climate gradient,
while the asymptotic curves in red
show the relationship of trait variation
along the gradients.
So this is saying that the distribution of abundance
is related to species traits
and how they vary along environmental gradients.
And so when we look at communities
through the lens of traits,
we can characterize them quantitatively.
There's similarities and differences,
with quantitative trait data,
measured traits that reflect their performance.
And this is really useful
compared to looking at species individually
for communities of multiple complex communities
of multiple species.
It compresses a matrix
of 50 or more species into a single number
that we can analyze.
For example, traits of a lot of interest
include those associated
with the worldwide leaf economic spectrum.
And this is
a spectrum of correlated leaf traits
that reflect a trade-off
between fast returns
on investments of nutrients in dry mass and leaves,
and slow returns.
And so that contrasts species
with thick long-lived leaves
that are very conservative in their use of resources
from species with very thin, short-lived leaves
that are more acquisitive.
And these trade-offs can really affect plant performance
under different climatic and management regimes.
And this is just one example
of a spectrum of traits.
Additional spectra that have been proposed
include a wood economic spectrum,
a root economic spectrum.
And then there are questions about, are all these traits
just correlated together in a single axis
of variation and performance
called the plant economic spectrum,
or do they represent different axes and dimensions
of ecological strategies and differences among plants?
These traits can be aggregated across the community
by calculating community weighted mean traits.
And these are calculated
as the sum of the relative abundance
of species in the community
multiplied by their average trait value.
And so there are a lot of questions
about, well, can we really just use one trait value
to represent a species?
This approach is gaining popularity
with the advent of global trait databases,
where you're able to just download trait data
for the species that you're studying in your community.
And so it's raised a lot of questions
about whether it's reasonable to do that,
or if there's intraspecific variation
that needs to be accounted for
in these models of community weighted mean traits.
So this approach of looking at forest communities
through the lens of traits
is a powerful approach that can provide a mechanistic basis
for predicting the effects of climate change.
That represents a compromise
between really complex and detailed population models
and simple spatial correlation or climate envelope models.
And so this mechanistic basis is really important
because it's what separates causation from correlation.
These predictions can also be generalized across systems.
So if we look at trends in the Northeast,
although the composition of forests in Europe
in similar climate conditions,
the species composition differs,
we can compare results in terms of traits,
so it can be generalized.
These results can be generalized to other systems.
Furthermore, it provides a way to link
community weighted mean traits
to species composition and ecosystem services,
so effects on ecosystem services.
So it's a really powerful framework,
and we can look at interactions
between climate and disturbance
or looking at how silvicultural management can be used
to manipulate community weighted mean traits
in the face of climate change
in order to sustain ecosystem services.
So looking at those questions of measurement,
which traits do we measure, and at what intensity,
this is a question that Matthew Hecking,
a graduate student I advised at SUNY ESF,
he recently graduated, was interested in.
And Matthew is presenting a poster on this study,
which was recently just accepted for publication.
So congratulations, Matthew.
So he's looking at the question
of, you know, which traits do we measure?
What are the axes or dimensions of variation among species
in tree species in Northeastern forest?
And at what intensity, so what are the levels
of intraspecific variability, and how do they relate
to environmental conditions and climate
and light transmission in the understory?
And so I encourage you
to visit his poster today
and learn more about what he found there.
His second chapter or manuscript
then applies these trait values to communities.
And this is a collaboration
with Martin Dovciak
and his student, Justin Tourville at SUNY ESF,
so applying these trait data that Matthew collected
to the vegetation data in the Dovciak lab
to assess community weighted mean traits
in relation to elevation gradients
associated with climate conditions.
And so what Matthew is finding
is that at the community level,
specifically area increases with mean annual temperature.
So this is one trait
associated with the leaf economic spectrum.
And on the other side of the leaf economic spectrum,
leaf dry matter content decreases
with mean annual temperature.
So this is associated with elevation gradients.
And so as you go up the mountain,
leaves become thicker and more long-lived
as you transition from that temperate deciduous forest
to the high elevation coniferous forests.
And this is looking
at understory tree seedling communities in blue,
and in gaps, tree seedling communities in gaps.
And so Matthew is seeing that specific leaf area
is also a little bit higher in the gaps,
and this represents a shift
in about 0.25 degrees mean annual temperature.
And this is consistent with a lot of literature
that's been coming out recently
looking at the effects of gaps on the microclimate,
and thus the thermophilization of understory communities
or the transition to warmer adapted species
in the understory.
And I don't think this is particularly a bad thing.
I guess what's concerning is
that a 0.25 degrees Celsius isn't enough
when we're considering warming
of 1.5 degrees or higher.
We can develop these statistically mechanistic models
of community weighted mean trait response to climate,
and use the parameters to project effects of climate change
on community weighted mean traits
and associated ecosystem services.
I've been working on a project out of Western Oregon
that does this for understory plant communities
of coastal Douglas fir forests.
And we're looking at using a density management experiment
that's replicated across a climate gradient
to parameterize these models
and project the effects of climate change
for different density management scenarios,
and translate that into effect traits or ecosystem services,
focusing on early-seral habitat and pollination services,
as well as indigenous cultural ecosystem services.
So we can design silvicultural prescriptions
and management strategies that sustain these services
in the face of change.
And this is a bit of a sidebar,
but I just want to share with you how excited I am
about looking at these cultural services
of indigenous cultural services of these understory species.
And I'm drawing on this very recent publication
coming out of California in the Klamath River Basin
that provides a new conceptualization
of indigenous cultural ecosystem services
that doesn't just lump all cultural values
into one corner, but recognizes
that these indigenous cultural ecosystem services
provide regulating, provisioning and supporting services
that influence species identities,
experience and capabilities.
So this new conceptualization
also integrates cultural practices,
and so the influence of management on ecosystems.
So this is a really complex figure.
And I don't expect, I'm not trying to get everyone
to digest it all right now,
but I just wanted to kind of share it to you
'cause it's something I came across recently
that kind of blew my mind.
And I'm excited about digging into that
with this work in Oregon.
Okay, so now we'll come back up that rabbit hole
and get back to silviculture.
We often focus on variability in forest structure
and species diversity as a source of adaptive capacity.
And so conventional silviculture
represented here as managed uneven-aged stands
and managed even-aged stands
focuses on controlling developmental trajectories
and maximizing yield by maintaining fully stocked stands
and simplifying stand composition and structure.
So this strategy really aims for a very narrow target
in range of conditions
that can maintain high rates
of carbon storage and productivity,
but it also reduces options for the future.
This is concerning particularly as climate conditions
and disturbance regimes change
and make conditions unsuitable for target tree species.
So this uncertainty we face suggests the need
for more of a bet hedging approach
that builds adaptive capacity
by managing for a broader range
and diversity of ecosystem characteristics
thinking about species and structural conditions.
So we can further extend this logic
to traits, right?
So we can incorporate traits into silvicultural planning
for climate change and adaptation,
climate change adaptation and mitigation
by considering not only specific target trait values,
but also variability in traits.
And so to manage the adaptive capacity
or adaptive complexity of ecosystems,
we need to not only consider structural complexity,
but also the functional complexity of the forest ecosystem.
And so structural complexity often refers
to variation in the density and age structure
and spatial configurations of trees.
But we also need to think about species
and functional trait diversity and complexity.
In Northern hardwood forests
of the Northeast and Great Lakes region,
species structural and functional diversity
is often degraded,
for example, by exploitative logging.
Most Northern forests in the Northeast
are considered understocked relative to their capacity
as a result of a history of high-grade logging
and other disturbances
which are caused by introduced pests and pathogens.
Furthermore, there's degradation in soil fertility
associated with the legacy of agriculture and acid rain,
that has reduced the capacity of trees
to go and sequester carbon.
Finally, we have issues with regeneration lags
associated with high deer populations
and Beech bark disease.
And so here's a picture contrasting
in an old growth Northern hardwood stand.
This is from the lake states
in the Sylvania Wilderness Area
with a younger second growth stand in Wisconsin,
showing the type of degradation
in structural and functional diversity.
So for climate change adaptation and mitigation,
one strategy could be to restore
and rehabilitate functional diversity.
One of my master's students at SUNY ESF, Keenan Rivers,
has been particularly interested
in this Beech bark disease issue
and the development of beech thickets in aftermath forests.
And so he's looking at spatial patterns of beech thickets
and thicket structure and development over time,
and how that is influenced
by various drivers at different scales,
and feeds back to influence
other aspects of the understory community.
So he's working on coming up with a classification
of different structures and stages
of aftermath thicket development,
and relating that to variation
in the understory communities.
And so far, he's finding
that as the thicket becomes denser and more intense,
the cover of forbs and graminoids decreases,
while that of ferns, shrubs and trees increases.
So there's some linkages there.
So in addition to controlling beech
and thinking about how to manage the effects of beech,
we also need to focus on deer.
This is a forest in the Catskills,
a Northern hardwood forest in the Catskills
at the Frost Valley YMCA.
And you can see
a shelterwood harvest
where deer have not been excluded
compared to where they have been excluded,
so no regeneration
where deer have been allowed to graze and browse
compared to really dense regeneration in the exclosures.
So here's another look at that
from outside the exclosure here to inside.
So the deer interacts with the understory community,
creating this really dense vegetation
that makes it very difficult for seedlings to establish.
So when restoring adaptive capacity
and managing for adaptive capacity,
we really need to think about controlling deer and beech.
So that one strategy is to kind of work with what we have.
However, we know that climate change
outpaces the ability of plants
to grow and migrate to new conditions.
So another strategy is to transition forests
to species that are better adapted to future conditions,
whether that's moving populations
from warmer future climates,
to expanding the ranges of species slightly,
to larger migrations
and moving species
across natural migration boundaries.
I've been working
with colleagues at ESF
and now Michigan Technological University
to develop alternative silvicultural strategies
for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
And so we're gonna compare a no action
and a business as usual scenario
that don't focus on adaptive capacity,
to this restoration and rehabilitation approach,
which is similar to ecological ideas,
underlying ecological silviculture,
and the transition.
The business as usual in Northern hardwoods
we think is generally a shelterwood,
so even-aged shelterwood.
In Michigan and the UP,
it's more of a single tree selection.
And both of these strategies utilize natural regeneration.
So to develop the restoration and rehabilitation option,
we can build on that to add things like legacy retention,
larger canopy openings,
ensure that the residual target structure
increases functional diversity,
and use population enrichment planting
to increase functional diversity.
In contrast, the transition for Northern hardwoods
is most likely going to be
a variable density shelterwood with understory removal
combined with underplanting of future-adapted species,
oaks and hickories, mixing in some conifers like white pine
for that functional diversity component.
And so we expect some trade-offs
between the ability for these different strategies
to provide carbon storage
and sequestration rates,
which will be higher
in the no action and business as usual,
which retain higher levels of overstory stocking,
compared to building adaptive capacity,
where we reduce tree stocking to a greater degree
to develop this adaptive capacity
and the regeneration layer.
And so there might be some trade-offs initially,
but over time we would expect these adaptive capacities
to store and sequester more carbon
than the business as usual and no action.
We've scoped out two sites
to replicate the experiment in New York,
and collected, established permanent plots
and experimental units
and collected a bunch of pre-treatment data.
So one is in the Allegheny Plateau
at Heiberg Memorial Forest,
and another at Huntington Wildlife Forest
in the Adirondacks.
We're also going to replicate the experiment
here in the Upper Peninsula at the Ford Forest.
There are advantages to, it's exciting to be able
to replicate this experiment
across a gradient of environmental conditions,
with the Adirondacks and the Upper Peninsula
being similar, mean at more similar in climate conditions
than the Allegheny Plateau.
And there's also differences
in how the climates are projected to change
at these locations,
with the New York replicates
changing primarily in mean annual temperature,
while the Upper Peninsula is expected
to increase in mean annual temperature,
but also decline in summer precipitation.
So by replicating the experiment across this gradient,
we can look at interesting interactions
between silvicultural management
and climate and climate change over time.
Overall, we expect this study to result
in the development of trait-based prescriptions
for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
We'll be able to quantify vegetation and ecosystem responses
to these alternative silvicultural approaches,
and compare treatment effects across sites
that vary in climate and species composition.
For example, contrasting our forests and Northern hardwoods
in upper Michigan that have no beech
with Northern hardwoods in New York,
which have that significant beech component
and beech thicket issue.
And of course, we're gonna monitor
and do adaptive management.
This doesn't just stop at the implementation.
There's a lot of uncertainty about how forests will respond,
about climate change in general and changes in disturbance,
and not only how that's going to change,
but how that's going to affect the forests.
And it's very complex.
So we need to be humble and we need to assess,
incorporate, close the loop and incorporate research,
integrated research and monitoring and assessment,
and measures of success,
to adapt these strategies and develop them over time.
So we'll be looking at both near and long-term effects.
We'll also use the experiment
as a platform to engage with various stakeholders,
including land trust managers and teachers.
This bullseye diagram is something I developed
working with Shari Dann
at SUNY ESF, as well as Stacy McNulty.
So we're kind of looking at this bullseye approach
to engaging with key stakeholders,
but also lots of other groups like graduate students,
through research, undergrads and graduates.
With coursework, these sites are really accessible
and can be used on field trips,
engaging with forestry professionals and managers
on field trips,
but also to collaboratively develop
and implement these prescriptions,
as well as children and recreationists.
So we have lots of opportunities
to engage various groups with this experiment.
Moreover, I wanna recognize
that like we're in the nascent stages of this,
and there are other similar experiments.
The ASCC network was really influential in our design.
And so we're really building off of that
and tweaking it in various ways.
But we're really excited about those studies
and opportunities to collaborate
across studies in the ASCC network.
There's also the DREAM Project,
which is another experiment
looking at transition strategies,
and in doing so, working with NIACS.
We're living in a very disruptive time on multiple levels,
but we can't turn away.
We have to face these.
We have to continue to face these challenges head on
and use all of our tools to reimagine forest communities
and make those changes acceptable.
So this trait-based framework provides powerful tools,
not only for projecting change,
but also looking at ways
of silviculturally managing that change
in order to sustain the values and services of forests.
So I'd like acknowledge all the collaborators
that I work with on this,
the many undergraduate and graduate students
and other colleagues and partners at ESF,
Michigan Tech and Oregon State University.
I'd love to address any questions
or discussion that anyone would like to have at this point.
- Great. Thank you, Julia.
Yep, everyone, you can post your questions in the Q&A box
and we can get to them there.
You can also put them in the chat,
or feel free to use the raise hand function
at the bottom of your Zoom screen and we can get to you.
It looks like we have one coming in already.
This is from Samantha Myers,
says "hi, Julia, thanks for a great talk.
I'm a grad student at UMass
and have also been thinking about how to integrate
individual level functional traits
into forest dynamic frameworks
to predict forest carbon storage and long-term resilience.
You mentioned using CWM
versus integrated intraspecific variability,
and I was wondering what you've found
using these two approaches.
I would also be very interested
if you'd be willing to share an example
of the trait-based silvicultural prescriptions
that you mentioned you're using."
- Yeah.
Yeah, so Matthew Hecking
is the recent master's student who just finished,
who's really been developing this
for forests in the Northeast.
And I also did a little work on this
in understory communities of Oregon, on the Oregon project.
So what we're generally finding is
that intraspecific variation,
levels of intraspecific variation
vary across traits and are greater
in more of the chemical-based traits,
like nitrogen content, phosphorous content,
than the more morphological traits
associated with the leaf economic spectrum.
So the sensitivity
varies among the traits,
and that intraspecific variation is associated
with gradients in light availability
for the most part.
There's some influence of climate,
but light is really more important for forests,
for these forest species.
Generally in the morphological traits,
the taxonomic variation is more important,
explains a lot of the variation.
So the intraspecific variation is relatively low
and not as much of a concern.
And we've been exploring ways
of, you know, we can't just go out,
to incorporate intraspecific variability,
you know, we can't just go out
and measure every individual, right?
Then we're back
to the complex population demographic models.
So looking at ways of modeling,
Matthew has been looking at ways of modeling that variation
and predicting how traits will vary
within a species based on environmental conditions,
and incorporating that
into the community weighted trait metric.
He does that, he explores that more in a second chapter.
So it's a little bit more preliminary,
but it's generally species turnover
that is more important than this intraspecific variability.
So I don't know.
I think I'm coming around to think
that, you know, there's important intraspecific variability
across the gradients,
but it's not the main story.
And we can look at how to incorporate it,
particularly how those traits change on average,
but we don't wanna get too caught up in that
and lose sight of the forest for the trees, so to speak.
It doesn't seem to be the most important dynamic out there,
but what is important
is making sure that those traits are measured
across species under similar environmental conditions.
So instead of taking a simple average,
we can use our models to estimate,
if we're gonna use a single value,
estimate that single value
under a common set of environmental conditions.
And that way we don't get that intraspecific variability
having an unknown effect
on our community weighted trait metrics.
And so dealing with that may be important,
relatively more or less important
depending on the ecosystem function side
of the response effect trait framework.
So if you're looking at ecosystem functions
like productivity and carbon storage,
or using these community weighted traits
to parameterize a process-based model,
incorporating that variation may become more important.
- Thanks. - Yeah.
- Just on the question of some examples
of the trait-based silvicultural prescriptions
that you've mentioned,
is that something you could speak to a little more?
- Yeah, so I haven't like finalized those prescriptions yet,
but some kind of general principles will be involving
considering the functional traits
of the species that you're planting,
and selecting species
that will increase functional diversity,
as well as, excuse me,
as well as make the community better adapted
to future climate conditions,
so developing a framework for that,
as well as specific recommendations
for what species to retain on site
in the harvesting, in the silvicultural treatment.
If it's a regeneration treatment,
you know, making sure to retain conifers
and a diversity of species and traits.
So that's kind of the general guidance,
and then kind of getting specific there,
considering your specific site
and forest and pre-treatment structure.
- Great. Thank you.
We've had a couple coming in on the chat as well.
From Jerry Carlston, "Brilliant and innovative.
How can we put these data-heavy decisive models
into existing strata at the landscape ecosystem
soil, hydrological, geological scale, et cetera?"
Kind of how do you take this
and then put it out into a specific site
when you've got the findings?
- How do we kind of scale up the results?
- I think that's what it's getting at.
And Jerry, feel free to correct me in the chat if I'm wrong.
Yeah. These are very data-heavy, decisive models.
How do you put them onto the landscapes
that individuals are managing?
So it's probably like a scale-up, scale-out question.
- Yeah. I've been thinking about that.
So yeah, like the more we can do this at a bigger scale
and incorporate geospatial data
to develop these models,
the more we can extrapolate across the landscape.
So one thing I've been thinking about
with the Oregon project and the coastal Douglas fir
is to kind of map it using FIA.
If our predictors
include climate and overstory conditions,
you know, can we use FIA data, intercalated FIA data
to map it at larger scales
and, you know, make kind of assumptions
for management scenarios
that we could map
and apply and scale up.
And a similar thing could be said,
could be done in the Northeast
with the Northeastern forest vegetation data.
Some of the issues come into play
when you have variables that are important like light
that aren't measured.
So it'd be involved coming up with a way
to maybe estimate light from those structural variables
that are in the FIA database.
There are also,
there have been a lot of advances recently
with mapping traits and estimating traits
and physiological perimeters for process-based models
using hyperspectral data,
using remote sensing, using hyperspectral sensors.
So that would be if those were put on satellites
and more broadly available,
that would be very useful for this kind of thing as well.
Then you kind of lose the species composition information.
And so you'd have to estimate species composition
from the traits, which can be done,
but that's how that would work.
It'd be a little different.
- Great. Thanks.
Another one here in the chat, this one from Jeff Warren.
"Thank you for a thought-provoking presentation.
The trait approach seems to be appropriate
for index development and potentially linked
to bird, mammal and herp taxa habitat needs.
Has this been considered?"
- And linked to I'm sorry, what was it, herp?
- Bird, mammal and herp taxa habitat needs.
- Habitat names?
- Needs. - Needs, okay, yeah.
Yeah, so that's one aspect of the project in Oregon.
I'm sorry, my speakers, I have a new computer
and I need to get some new speakers.
They're not very good.
So we are considering
kind of early seral habitat considerations in Oregon,
where that's a really big issue.
Its industry is a big landowner,
and they kind of skip over that stage
by creating dense plantations
with combining that with aggressive vegetation control.
So there's a lot of interest in managing
for high quality early seral wildlife habitat
on federal lands.
And one of our goals with the Oregon project
is to develop a trait-based method
for understanding the linkages
between response traits
and effect traits that focus on the wildlife values
of those plants.
So we look at each individual species,
and we can characterize its value
as wildlife habitat, birds, mammals,
herps, that's what we said, yeah,
would be one approach to that.
And that's exactly what we're doing
with the cultural services too.
We look at each individual plant
and we classify it with respect to its values.
And then we can use the response traits
for the mechanistic linkage
and the statistically mechanistic model,
and then use this maximum entropy model
to reconstruct species composition
from that response trait.
So it looks at your response trait,
and it's like, what is the most likely distribution
of species given their traits for that response trait.
So then we have our species-based
species abundance community, and we can take that
and turn it into the effect trait,
the function or the services that it provides
and characterize the services.
And so these linkages, I think that's a really cool process
because these linkages between responses and effects
are sometimes direct
as in the case of parameterizing a process model,
a physiological model
or a radiative transfer model.
Those models all use traits to parameterize.
So we can use, and that's more of a direct linkage
to the effect in the ecosystem services.
But sometimes the services have nothing to do
with how the plants respond to climate.
So we can use this maximum entropy model
to reconstruct the community
and characterize the ecosystem service
in a way that's completely independent.
And that's what we're doing with the Oregon project.
- That's interesting.
It kind of raised a question that I have been pondering
as you've been going through this
'cause I think there are traits and functions,
there are functions that are gonna to be somewhat tied
to a particular species or ones that may be tied
to a service that species provides
that could be substituted with another species.
Do you deal with needing to have two species,
like the connection between different plant species
in order to provide a single service, right?
If you boil traits and functions
down to just the species itself,
do you ever end up with functions that only occur
when species co-occur?
Does that make sense?
- Yeah, I mean, that's a good question
and something I haven't considered before.
Can you think of an example?
- No, I wish I could off the top of my head,
but I was trying to come up with one
probably more around the cultural services
where it may be that you're getting wildlife habitat,
but it's not important just to have habitat
for say bear or moose,
but to also have a certain set,
a certain tree species in combination with that.
So I was trying to think
more from the cultural services framework,
but I don't have a specific example.
- Yeah. I'll have to think about that.
It seems like this is such a flexible framework
that there's gotta be a way
to incorporate that.
- I don't see any others coming into the chat.
Does anyone else have a question
they want to raise their hand and ask on their mic
or add to the chat?
I've got a couple of hands popped up.
Jerry, can you go ahead, please?
You should be able to unmute yourself.
- Can you hear me? - Yes.
- [Jerry] Okay, yeah, brilliant.
I love this, and what I'm really wondering about is
because I'm in the Northeast, catastrophic losses.
How do you see that being integrated?
You know, I mean we've lost chestnut.
We're probably gonna lose ash, hemlock
and other severe species losses at the landscape level.
I mean, the cultural and ecological impact of these things
are huge and probably not gonna stop.
I'd like to hear you comment on that.
- Yeah. That's a great question.
There, like gosh, I could approach answering that
in a number of different ways.
And I think I'll just start
with talking about this other project
that I've been working on out of ESF looking at
restoring American Chestnut using the transgenic varieties
that Bill Powell has developed.
So ESF has this oak forest,
and we did this variable density shelterwood,
and underplanted these transgenic American chestnuts
alongside a bunch of other species
that chestnut would have grown with historically,
including northern red oak, pignut hickory,
shagbark hickory, bitternut hickory.
And there's also a lot of existing natural regeneration
of sugar maple and white ash,
and excitingly for me as a silviculturist
who knows that oak regeneration is kind of a magic trick
and very challenging,
the shelterwood cuts coincided
with a mass year of acorn production in there,
so there's lots of little baby red oaks everywhere.
And I feel like I won already.
But we know there's a lot of issues with competition
that we still have to look at.
But anyway, this is kind of I'm going down a rabbit hole.
So Garrett Evans is a master's student
who's looking at the physiological
and growth responses
of those American chestnuts and other species
to this variation and residual stocking
associated with our shelterwood treatments
to look at how growth responses to light
vary among these species
and kind of better delineate
that ecological niche of chestnuts.
Dr. John Drake is a tree physiologist.
He and I co-advise Garrett in this project.
And so he's looking at how these growth responses differ
and eventually we'll link that back to traits.
And we have some hypotheses
related to, you know chestnut being able to kind of outgrow,
outgrow all of its associates
in really high resource conditions,
which allowed it to kind of dominate
the oak hickory forest in the Northeast historically.
And so we would expect like trait hierarchies
and growth hierarchies
that might shift across that light gradient.
So that's one way we were looking at that,
and this trait-based approach can also allow us
to identify replacement species.
So if we're losing ash
you know, and Tony D'Amato
has, of course done a lot of work with us,
using a trait-based approach
to look at which species are most similar in traits
and what are some options
for replacing those species,
whether it's ash or hemlock,
with other ecologically similar species.
So, yeah, that's a whole, whole area
that I'd love to do work on as well.
- Great. Thank you for the question, Jerry.
I saw another hand pop up. I'm not sure.
I think it was Julia.
I don't know if you wanna ask a question,
give you a second.
It happened again very briefly,
but then it went back down.
There you are, Julia.
All right, go ahead.
You should be able to unmute.
- [Julia] Okay. Hi, thank you for this presentation.
This has been super informative.
I was kind of struggling
with like the best way to ask this question,
but are there,
do you know of any landback initiatives
that are occurring in your area, and have thoughts
on how frameworks such as this
could be adapted
by community groups that are reclaiming,
like indigenous community groups
that are reclaiming their land and managing it?
- I missed, what kind of initiatives did you say?
- [Julia] Landback.
- Oh, landback initiatives, yeah.
Yeah, that's exactly where this Oregon works fits in
is that some of the tribes were,
they obtained some significant land
from the BLM.
And so there's reinvigorated interest
in doing this research for them
to look at managing
indigenous cultural ecosystem services.
And, you know, they obviously already know a lot
about how to manage these plants
and cultivate these services.
So I'm basically trying to like contribute,
you know, additional information
about what can they expect under climate change
on their land.
And it's also important for considering treaty rights.
So sometimes in the treaties,
the tribes have the ability
to, you know, forage
and utilize natural resources in their ceded territories
that they don't necessarily own today.
And so what does,
how does climate change
and the effect that that's gonna have on those services
affect their treaty rights and our ability
to uphold their treaty rights
were some of the original considerations
when we developed that project.
- Thanks for the question, Julia.
I'm curious how this framework,
or this lens intersects with invasive plants,
and potentially do you end up
with a different conception
of what is good or bad for an ecosystem
when you think about traits alone
and not the source of those traits?
- Yeah, for sure.
It kind of takes out those value-laden
classifications of invasive or introduced
to look at at the functions and the services.
Yeah, I think there are some instances
where these introduced species
kind of, you know, they have traits
that are significantly different
from the rest of the community,
and that's what allows them to be so successful.
So it provides insight
into, you know, what are the ecological differences,
and that can give you information on how to control them
if you wanna control them.
In some cases, you know, an introduced species
might not necessarily be invasive
and it might have, just like fits in.
And so it does cause you to question your values,
you know, how you receive these introduced species.
It challenges your notion that introduced species are bad.
And that is further highlighted
when you have European collaborators (laughs)
who seem to empathize with those introduced species.
- Thanks. Are there other questions folks have?
You can either raise your hand
or put something into the Q&A box.
We do have a couple more minutes.
- Me?
- We have, I just said we have a couple more minutes
in the session, so if there's any other questions.
I'll ask one more.
When I think about some of the work
that our staff are doing for the FEMC,
we talk a lot about
data collection through monitoring plots
and in forest, specifically forest inventory plots,
forest health monitoring plots,
and I think there's often a desire
to hang more data collection on these networks
that have long-term ongoing collection.
I'm curious if you see any,
like if you had an ask
for folks who are collecting inventory data
or collecting regular survey data,
is there additional types of collections we should be doing
to support better understanding of functional traits
and their kind of presence/absence on the landscape?
- Yeah, I think that would be a really great idea
to incorporate trait data collection with monitoring.
Like I said,
similar to the population models that say,
you know, just individuals vary so much
and we need to measure every tree
and measure fecundity and growth
and, you know, every aspect of every tree
over and over and over every year,
like to understand what's gonna happen,
that same kind of thing happens with the traits.
You know, if we think about individuals varying,
we need to measure every individual.
So yeah, Matthew and I have been working
on, you know, how do we kind of bridge that
and model that variation,
but there are a lot of unanswered questions.
So if we could actually, you know, measure traits
at permanent plots every year,
we could address a lot of the questions related to that
and develop either more complex scenarios
or put those concerns to bed.
But I think there are a lot of interesting questions
and people are really interested
in that individual level variation and intraspecific.
And yeah, we can talk about transitioning
in terms of climate change adaptation,
but there's a lot of potential
of our existing plants and native forests.
And I think we should explore that and give it a chance.
- Great, thanks.
Jerry, I see you have another question.
You should be able to unmute yourself.
- [Jerry] Yeah, listening to that talk. I just thought
given the evolution of more holistic ecosystem approaches
to traits and services,
I'd like to hear, understand that perhaps silviculture,
the term and the science itself is becoming passe.
- Are you asking if or are you positing that it is?
- [Jerry] I'm asking if Julia has a comment on that
'cause obviously she's silviculturally oriented, so yeah.
- So given this focus on traits
and these ecological silviculture,
and is silviculture as we know it conventionally,
is that passe, is that kind of what you're getting at?
- [Jerry] I mean like the silviculture
I learned 40 years ago, is it still meaningful?
- Yeah. Oh yeah.
Yeah, it certainly is and it's important.
I teach silviculture.
I've been teaching silviculture for years.
I don't remember how many right now.
And so there's kind of
this like textbook silviculture
you know, principles and practices that we still use.
And we're just integrating
a broader range of ecosystem objectives
that we have to apply these tools for.
So we have to think about how we're applying them.
You know, a shelterwood is still a shelterwood
and the principles don't change.
And it's really important.
There's a lot of, you know, ecologists
who don't, you know,
haven't had a silviculture class
and don't understand all the rich ecology,
applied ecology and thought
that goes into these silvicultural practices.
You know, thinning and extending biological rotations
is completely relevant
to climate change mitigation,
and is one of the main strategies.
And that's intensive silviculture.
Like that is, we have an app for this.
And so people with a silvicultural background
need to recognize the power and importance of these tools.
It's not necessarily that the tools themselves are changing
or the principles, but the circumstances
and the objectives are.
So we have to be flexible
and share the power of those tools
for satisfying a broader range of objectives
than just timber production.
- Thanks. I think that's well said.
We had a question come into the Q&A box from Nancy Patch
regarding introduced species.
"Is there any concern over transgenic trees in the wild?
Chestnut has a long lifespan.
Will the use of transgenic trees
for endangered species restoration open the door
for transgenic use in common trees or for market traits,
or is this already too late?"
- Can I see that?
- Yep, you should be able
- Do I have access to that?
- You should see the Q&A bar on the bottom.
- When there's lots of details like that.
- I think it makes sense. - There it is, okay.
Yeah, certainly that's a big consideration right now.
Will the use transgenic?
You know, there's a lot of resistance too.
So we're using transgenic trees in this experiment
under very regulated circumstances.
And honestly, that's not my area
and I don't have all the information
about what those regulations are.
But I think unless there's further approval,
like these chestnuts have to be killed
before they're able to reproduce.
And it's a very small scale that we've planted them on,
in a very controlled setting.
That said,
Bill Powell and others are strongly seeking approval
to use these transgenic trees
in the wild and restore them at a grand scale.
I think there is a lot of concern
about, you know, the slippery slope that might be there,
opening the door for transgenic use in other species.
But my impression is
that like this is a very regulated process
and it's not easy,
and there's a good case to be made that there's more good
than harm that can be done in this case
where, you know, we already have hybrid chestnuts
being planted everywhere.
You can go get hybrid chestnuts at the nursery.
Transgenic has more genes of our American Chestnut
than the transgenic does,
and is expected to perform better
in the face of Chestnut blight.
You know, the slippery slope is always concerning,
and I just think we need to avoid the slippery slope.
- Thanks Julia, certainly an active area of discussion,
not just in terms of silviculture and forest ecology,
but really kind of what our ethics are gonna be as a people
trying to address this issue.
We're almost at time.
I'm gonna just kind of pose a broad question
to take us out here.
You know, you are looking at the future
and you're trying to better understand
how we get to where we wanna be.
When you think of what gives you hope and excitement
and the feeling of a bright day ahead,
what is it that drives you?
- Oh, that's great.
And I kind of meant to leave this in more to my talk,
but you know how that goes.
I was gonna talk about all these students
that I worked with at ESF on these projects,
and how gritty they are.
During the pandemic, you know, a lot of this work
that we did together was in 2020
in the early stages of the pandemic.
And holy cow, we got a lot done
in the face of a lot of obstacles.
I think their passion and grit,
just being lovely people,
makes it, brightens my day and inspires me
to keep pushing forward
and, you know, face these challenges head on
and try to work with them to carve out a brighter future.
- That is so well said. Thank you.
Well, thank you, Julia.
That was really wonderful.
And thanks for engaging
in such a good discussion after as well.
So that concludes our plenary session.