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Maintenance of forest ecosystem health and vitality

Formally Refereed

Abstract

Forest health will likely be threatened by a number of factors - including fragmentation, fire regime alteration, and a variety of diseases, insects, and invasive plants - along with global climate change (Krist et al. 2007, Tkacz et al. 2008). By itself, global climate change could dramatically and rapidly alter forest composition and structure (Allen and Breshears 1998, Allen et al. 2010). In conjunction with other threats, global climate change poses unique challenges to forest management by influencing forest dynamics at virtually all levels: disturbance regimes in forest ecosystems; rates of resource availability and utilization; canopy gap formation and woody debris dynamics; fire regimes; community composition; and forest distribution, structure, biodiversity, and biogeochemistry. Global climate change and other threats, in turn, could favor the establishment of invasive species. The following pages discuss effects of the most pertinent threats to the future health of forests in the Northern United States.

Parent Publication

Citation

DeSantis, Ryan D.; Moser, W. Keith. 2016. Maintenance of forest ecosystem health and vitality. In: Shifley, Stephen R.; Moser, W. Keith, eds. Future forests of the northern United States. Gen. Tech. Rep. NRS-151. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station: 107-143. Chapter 5.
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/50454