Landscape fragmentation and forest fuel accumulation: Effects of fragment size, age, and climate

Landscape fragmentation creates an increasingly complex environment in which to manage forests in the United States. The effects of fragmentation on productivity, mortality, and decomposition in forests vary with fragment size, forest type, and climate. Fragmentation can affect fuel accumulation, increase the spatial variability of fuel loads, and affect the susceptibility of forests to fire. Developing a landscape-scale picture of spatial variability in fuel loads requires an understanding of fragmentation effects at a variety of scales. We propose to address the effect of forest fragmentation on fuel loads along gradients of climate, stand age, and fragment size. We will use a combination of remote sensing, field sampling and experimentation, GIS, multivariate analyses, and empirical modeling in order to quantify and compare fuel loads in fragments of different sizes (e.g. ha to km), ages (e.g. remnant, young to old secondary), and in different climates (e.g. tropical, temperate, and boreal). Our goal is to develop methods to better predict and map fuel loads in fragmented forests and aid in management decisions on public forested lands. The research will be coordinated from USDA Forest Service Stations in Puerto Rico and the Pacific Northwest. We will conduct field work at sites in Puerto Rico, Oregon, and Alaska to investigate a climatic gradient defining a wide range of high biomass evergreen forest types found in the United States. Field studies, remote sensing analyses and mapping of fuel loads will focus on state and federal forests, experimental forest sites, and National Science Foundation Long term Ecological Research Sites in all three states.