Forest Conservation in the Anthropocene: Science, Policy, and Practice

by V. Alaric Sample, R. Patrick Bixler, Char Miller

Overview

Forest Conservation in the Anthropocene provides thought-provoking insight into the ongoing environmental crises that climate change is generating and raises critical questions about how public and private land managers in North America will adapt to the climatological disruptions that are already transforming the ecological structures of these forests.

In this pathbreaking anthology, a team of leading environmental researchers probes the central dilemmas that ecologists, forest land managers, state and federal agencies, and grassroots organizations are confronting—and will continue to confront—in the coming century. Each chapter examines strategies that are currently being tested across the country as scientists, citizen-­scientists, policy makers, academics, and activists work to grasp their options and opportunities for a future that will be shaped by ongoing environmental upheaval.

Successful adaptation to the challenges of climate change requires a transdisciplinary perspective. Forest Conservation in the Anthropocene provides a compelling set of arguments and case studies that underscores the need for innovative policies and energetic actions.

Contributors: Craig D. Allen, Mark Anderson, Susan Beecher, R. Travis Belote,  Timothy J. Brown, Anne A. Carlson, Tim Caro, Grace K. Charles, Dave Cleaves, Dena J. Clink, Ayesha Dinshaw, R. Kasten Dumroese, Jonas Epstein, Alexander M. Evans, Todd Gartner, Jessica E. Halofsky, Nels Johnson, Linda A. Joyce, Paige Lewis, Laura Falk McCarthy, Heather McGray, Constance I. Millar, James Mulligan, Chadwick Dearing, David L. Peterson, Will Price, Janine M. Rice, Jason Riggio, Tania Schoennagel, Mark L. Shaffer, Curt Stager, Scott L. Stephens, Thomas W. Swetnam, Gary M. Tabor, Christopher Topik, Monica G. Turner, Thomas T. Veblen, Alexandra M. Weill, Anthony L. Westerling, Carolyn Whitesell, Mary I. Williams

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607325215
Publisher:	University Press of Colorado
Publication date:	08/15/2016
Edition description:	1
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

V. Alaric Sample is president of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation in Washington, DC, and a fellow of the Society of American Foresters. He is author of numerous research papers, articles, and books on topics in national and international forest policy.
 
R. Patrick Bixler is a research fellow with the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin, and a senior fellow at the Pinchot Institute for Conservation. His work focuses on the intersection of ecology, economy, and governance in both large intact landscapes and urban contexts. He has published research on issues of land and water management, biodiversity conservation, climate adaptation, residential development, and urban resilience.
 
Char Miller is the W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of twenty-nine books and a regular contributor of essays, commentary, and reviews to professional journals, newspapers, and online media.

Read an Excerpt

Forest Conservation in the Anthropocene

Science, Policy, and Practice

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By V. Alaric Sample, R. Patrick Bixler, Char Miller

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2016 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60732-521-5

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CHAPTER 1

Climate Change in the Age of Humans

CURT STAGER

Human-driven climate change is only one of many challenges that forests must face during the twenty-first century and beyond. Even without adding more heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than would be available should all the planet's volcanoes erupt at once (Gerlach 2011), the presence of billions of human beings on Earth represents a major source of environmental change. We have become so numerous, our technologies so powerful, and our societies so interconnected that we have become a force of nature on a geological scale.

There is no consensus yet on when the Anthropocene epoch began (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Stager 2011). Most definitions date it to the Industrial Revolution, but human impacts on what were previously thought to be "untouched" landscapes have long affected forests through megaherbivore extinctions, land clearance, fires, grazing, and cultivation (Willis et al. 2004; Willis and Birks 2006; Lorenzen et al. 2011). Although its authorship and timing are difficult to pin down, the Anthropocene concept nevertheless provides a useful context for ecosystem management.

With approximately one-quarter of the planet's carbon dioxide reservoir now attributable to fossil fuel emissions, our behavior has become an integral part of global ecology. Our artificial nitrogen fixation now matches or exceeds natural production of available nitrogen worldwide; we change the appearances of continents through land use practices, rising sea levels, and shrinking ice masses; we disperse some species widely while driving others to extinction; and we guide evolution through changes in gene flow, selective breeding, and genetic engineering. The human presence affects the distribution, reproduction, and community structure of forests as well as their very survival, and it will make the ecological consequences of future climatic changes unique in the history of the planet.

Theoretical modeling provides possible examples of what may lie ahead in terms of climate, but proxy records of geologic history can also help to show which scenarios are most realistic and provide examples of biotic responses to climatic shifts in the past.

Today's anthropogenic climatic effects are superimposed on a background of variability that includes cyclic and irregular fluctuations on multiple spatial and temporal scales. Long, high-resolution records from ice cores, tree rings, cave formations, and aquatic sediments show that abrupt and extreme climate events are not limited to human causes, and that many of today's tree taxa have experienced such changes before.

The last 50 million years of the Cenozoic era was dominated by cooling from the high- CO2 hothouse of the Eocene "climatic optimum" (figure 1.1). The reasons for this are still unclear, but tectonism, weathering of the continents, and sequestration of carbon in marine sediments are likely contributors to the cooling trend (Garzione 2008). Temperatures fell low enough for an Antarctic ice cap to form between 45 and 34 million years ago, and during the last 3 million years temperatures have dropped far enough to trigger several dozen ice ages.

The overall cooling pattern of the Cenozoic was also punctuated by abrupt warming events. One of the most commonly cited examples was the PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) that occurred 56 million years ago and lasted roughly 200,000 years (figure 1.1; Dickens 2011). Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are thought to have reached or exceeded 3,000 ppm following the release of several thousand gigatons (GT; billions of metric tons) of carbon-rich gases into the atmosphere, possibly through volcanism in the Atlantic basin as well as other factors (Pearson and Palmer 2000; Dickens 2011). Global average temperatures rose 5°–10°C above their already warm states within 20,000 years or less, plant species migrated poleward, and insect herbivory on foliage increased, possibly in response to higher temperatures (Wing et al. 2005; Currano et al. 2008). Deciduous redwood forests encircled the Arctic Ocean, Nothofagus beech forests covered Antarctica, and ice-free, richly vegetated continents and land bridges facilitated the rapid migration of species (Bowen et al. 2002;Smith et al. 2006; Williams, Mendell, et al. 2008; Cantrill and Poole 2012).

Millennial-scale periodicities in the tilt, wobble, and orbital path of the Earth have been primary pacemakers of ice ages during the last 3 million years. Between cold glacial (longer) and stadial (shorter) periods, seasonal insolation cycles triggered warm interglacials and interstadials, as well. Sediment core evidence suggests that summers became wetter and 8°C or more warmer than today in Arctic Russia during insolation peaks between 3.5 and 2.5 million years ago that included repeated expansion of boreal forest over tundra (Brigham-Grette et al. 2013).

The last such warm period, often referred to as the Eemian Interglacial, produced regional temperatures 1°–3°C higher than today between 130,000 and 117,000 yr BP (years before present). The Arctic Ocean was partially ice free but most of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets remained intact despite occasional surges that lifted sea levels at least 7 m higher than today (Blanchon et al. 2009; Clark and Huybers 2009; Nørgaard-Pedersen et al. 2009). Conifers invaded Siberian tundra north of Lake Baikal, large stands of spruce, pine, and birch developed in southern Greenland, and woodlands in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York resembled those of today's Blue Ridge, with pollen records from Eemian-age lake deposits revealing the prevalence of oak, hickory, and black gum (Muller et al. 1993; de Vernal and Hillaire-Marcel 2008; Granoszewski et al. 2004). Rainfall intensified abruptly over 200 years or less in monsoonal Asia, and greener, moister conditions in tropical Africa and the Middle East helped Stone Age peoples to migrate through what are now the Sinai and Negev Deserts (Schneider et al. 1997; Chen et al. 2003; Yuan et al. 2004; Vaks et al. 2007).

More rapid and short-lived disruptions also occurred during glacials (figure 1.2), including Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles and Heinrich events associated with ice sheet surges and extreme climate fluctuations. Around 17,000 yr BP, massive ice-rafting and cooling in the North Atlantic basin contributed to a sudden, catastrophic collapse of the Afro-Asian monsoon system that desiccated Lakes Victoria, Tana, and Van, and produced genetic bottlenecks in human populations in India ("Heinrich Stadial 1"; Stager et al. 2011). Around 13,000 yr BP, the Younger Dryas stadial represented an abrupt return to glacial-type conditions in much of the northern hemisphere that began within less than a decade in some locations and caused severe aridity in much of tropical Africa and southern Asia (Mayewski et al. 1993; Stager et al. 2002). The end of the Younger Dryas 11,700 years ago represented a rapid shift to the warmer conditions that have dominated the Holocene epoch to modern times.

During the last 11,700 years, the fluctuations preserved in ice core records were not as dramatic as they were during the preceding glacial period, leading to a common misperception that climates of the Holocene were stable before the Industrial Revolution. In fact, ecologically significant instability was still common, even at the poles (O'Brien et al. 1995; Mayewski et al. 2004). High summer insolation in the northern hemisphere during the early Holocene contributed to ice retreat on the Arctic Ocean and to the expansion of lakes and forests throughout tropical Africa (DeMenocal et al. 2000; Stager et al. 2003; Kaufman et al. 2004), the effects of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) increased notably after about 5,000 yr BP (Moy et al. 2002), and other rapid climate changes also occurred throughout the Holocene (Mayewski et al. 2004). Within the last millennium, regional warming during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (ca. 1,000–700 yr BP) brought severe drought to much of North America and East Africa, and more widespread cooling occurred during the Little Ice Age (ca. 600–200 yr BP), triggering alpine glacial advances in Europe (Mayewski et al. 2004; Maasch et al. 2005; Verschuren et al. 2009). During the last century, nonhuman sources of variability including ENSO, the North Atlantic Oscillation, shifting westerly wind tracks, and the eleven-year solar cycle have repeatedly disturbed temperature and precipitation regimes over wide areas of the planet (IPCC 2007b; Stager et al. 2007, 2012).

In sum, high-resolution paleoclimate records reveal far more natural variability than was once assumed from earlier work that failed to sample geological archives in sufficient detail. The rapidity of recent climatic changes is not, as has sometimes been suggested, by itself sufficient evidence to identify humans as the cause.

The ancestors of today's forests experienced numerous climatic shifts in the past, so change alone is not a unique threat in and of itself. However, these records also offer stern warnings about what may lie ahead as a result of human activities in the Anthropocene. The idea of an ice-free Earth, acidified oceans, and massive, rapid climatic disruptions due to greenhouse gas buildups are not merely extremist perspectives; we now know that these conditions existed before, even without major human impacts. And although a facile interpretation of geological history might lead one to conclude that climate change is not a threat because it is "natural and ongoing," a more careful reading of paleoecological records shows that extreme climatic shifts of the past would be unwelcome in today's world, which is now inhabited by more than 7 billion human beings. What does the future hold? Climates will continue to change as they always have, but the effects of human presence will redefine the baselines upon which natural variability plays out. We are essentially loading the world's weather dice through a hotter, more vigorously circulating atmosphere. The limitations of models along with uncertainties regarding human behavior and technology forbid precise portrayals of what lies ahead, but the general direction and nature of global-scale changes are clear. The more greenhouse gases that we release, the higher global mean temperatures will become and the farther inland oceans will advance. Paleoclimate records also show that, in general, large-scale warming has tended to increase the water content and extent of monsoon systems, to shift mid-latitude storm tracks poleward, and to reduce the extent of ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice.

Surprises can also emerge from such a complex system. For example, although much of tropical Africa often became more arid during northern hemisphere cool periods and today tends to experience more intense rainfall in years just prior to solar maxima, an as-yet unexplained reversal of the cool-dry, warm-wet relationship produced dramatic lake level rises in East Africa during a prolonged solar minimum of the cool Little Ice Age, thereby weakening confidence in our understanding of how tropical climates operate (Stager et al. 2005, 2007; Verschuren et al. 2009). It has also been proposed that retreat of Arctic sea ice during recent years has contributed to rapid, erratic, and extreme swings in regional climates of the northern hemisphere (Francis and Vavrus 2012). We will not be able to model our way into complete preparedness for everything that the climate system may do in the future, but reasonable generalizations can nonetheless be made from long-term perspectives on the nature and causes of climate change.

One source of insights into future carbon dioxide dynamics is the work of scientists such as David Archer, whose pioneering research at the University of Chicago has been corroborated by other investigators as well (Archer 2005; Archer and Brovkin 2008; Eby et al. 2008; Schmittner et al. 2008). The astoundingly long-term views of the future that these studies provide show that we are setting in motion a much larger and longer-lasting array of disruptions than the relatively short-term global temperature rise that currently occupies our attention (Stager 2011).

At the heart of these findings is a simple question: "where does carbon dioxide go when it leaves our smokestacks and tailpipes?" Roughly three-quarters of it will dissolve directly into the oceans during the next several centuries to millennia, leaving slow weathering of carbonate and silicate minerals to wash the airborne remainder into the sea over tens of thousands of years (figure 1.3). When fossil fuel emissions inevitably level off and decline, whether by design or by depletion, marine uptake will cause atmospheric CO2 concentrations to level off and then to drop nearly as steeply as they rose until the oceans can absorb no more and mineral reactions more slowly consume the leftovers. During the relatively brief turnaround phase of "climate whiplash," many of the selection pressures that operated in the context of rising temperatures may swing into reverse during the cooling that follows (Stager 2011).

The form and timing of the peak, whiplash, and the long tail of the cooling-recovery curve will largely depend upon how much carbon dioxide we release during the next century or so. In a relatively moderate emissions scenario such as B1 (IPCC 2007b) in which non-fossil energy sources quickly replace coal, oil, and gas, approximately 1,000 GT of carbon will have been emitted since the Industrial Revolution. If instead we burn all remaining fossil fuel reserves in a scenario more like A2 (IPCC 2007b), then a total discharge of closer to 5,000 GT is more likely. This would lead to a higher, later, and more protracted peak and a much longer recovery (figure 1.3).

In one moderate scenario in which emissions decline after AD 2050, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 reach 550–600 ppm by AD 2200 (figure 1.3; Stager 2011). At thermal maximum around AD 2200–2300, global average temperatures are 2°–4°C higher than today. After a whiplash stage lasting several centuries, CO2 concentrations decrease steeply for several millennia due to marine uptake, and then fall within the range of preindustrial conditions after tens of millennia, possibly as long as 100,000 years. Even in this relatively mild case, the thermal effects of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are likely to prevent the next ice age, which orbital cycles could otherwise trigger around AD 50,000 (Berger and Loutre 2002; Archer and Ganopolski 2005).

In a more extreme scenario, CO2 concentrations peak close to 2,000 ppm around AD 2300 and take at least 400,000 years to recover (figures 1.3, 1.4; Stager 2011). The whiplash stage lasts for several thousand years, producing a seemingly stable plateau of PETM-style warmth 5°–9°C warmer than today that could persist long enough for ecosystems and cultures to coevolve with before the long recovery period destabilizes them again. In both scenarios, the staggered responses of temperature and sea level to changing CO2 concentrations further complicate environmental settings for future forests as well as for human beings. In figure 1.4, for example, global mean temperature continue to climb for several centuries after the CO2 peak, and sea levels continue to rise for thousands of years after the thermal peak because the temperatures are still high enough to melt continental ice masses.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Forest Conservation in the Anthropocene by V. Alaric Sample, R. Patrick Bixler, Char Miller. Copyright © 2016 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Forest Conservation and Management in the Anthropocene V. Alaric Sample 3

Section I Changing Climatic Regimes and Forest Ecosystems

Chapter 1 Climate Change in the Age of Humans Curt Stager 17

Chapter 3 Invasive Plants, Insects, and Diseases in the Forests of the Anthropocene Alexander M. Evans 33

Chapter 3 Climate and Wildfire in Western US Forests Anthony L. Westerling Timothy J. Brown Tania Schoennagel Thomas W Swetnam Monica G. Turner Thomas T. Veblen 43

Chapter 4 Forest Ecosystem Reorganization Underway in the Southwestern United States: A Preview of Widespread Forest Changes in the Anthropocene? Craig D. Allen 57

Section II Assessing Vulnerability and Threats to Current Management Regimes

Chapter 5 Increasing Resiliency in Frequent Fire Forests: Lessons from the Sierra Nevada and Western Australia Scott L. Stephens 73

Chapter 6 Protected Areas under Threat Tim Caro Grace K. Charles Dena J. Clink Jason Riggio Alexandra M. Weill Carolyn Whitesell 83

Chapter 7 Mitigating Anthropocene Influences in Forests in the United States Chadwick Bearing Oliver 99

Section III Adaptation Strategies for Biodiversity Conservation and Water Protection

Chapter 8 Planning the Future's Forests with Assisted Migration Mary I. Williams R. Kasten Dumroese 113

Chapter 9 Maintaining Forest Diversity in a Changing Climate: A Geophysical Approach Mark Anderson Nels Johnson 125

Chapter 10 Adaptation: Forests as Water Infrastructure in a Changing Climate Todd Gartner Heather McGray James Mulligan Jonas Epstein Ayesha Dinshaw 139

Chapter 11 Water Source Protection Funds as a Tool to Address Climate Adaptation and Resiliency in Southwestern Forests Laura Falk McCarthy 151

Section IV Transdisciplinarity in the Anthropocene

Chapter 12 Implementing Climate Change Adaptation in Forested Regions of the Western United States Jessica E. Halofsky Linda A. Joyce Constance I. Millar David L. Peterson Janine M. Rice 165

Chapter 13 Challenges and Opportunities for Large Landscape-Scale Management in a Shifting Climate: The Importance of Nested Adaptation Responses across Geospatial and Temporal Scales Gary M. Tabor Anne A. Carlson R. Travis Belote 179

Chapter 14 Climate Change Effects on Forests, Water Resources, and Communities of the Delaware River Basin Will Price Susan Beecher 195

Section V Evolving Institutional and Policy Frameworks

Chapter 15 Policy Challenges for Wildlife Management in a Changing Climate Mark L. Shaffer 211

Chapter 16 Evolving Institutional and Policy Frameworks to Support Adaptation Strategies David Cleaves K. Patrick Bixler 223

Chapter 17 Forest Conservation in the Anthropocene: Policy Recommendations V. Alaric Sample Christopher Topik 235

Works Cited 253

List of Contributors 321

Index 325

Editorial Reviews

“[This volume] addresses a very urgent issue . . . [and] needs to be read by everyone who is engaged in forest conservation and management.”
—Ian Spellerberg, Lincoln University

​"[W]​ell researched and written by authors who represent the transdisciplinary nature of research on climate change impacts and policy in the context of forest environments.​ . . . a great addition to a reading list in an environmental management course or as a standalone reader for a university course on forest conservation. The extensive bibliography also serves as an excellent reference on this topic.​"​
—CHOICE​

"[A] valuable resource reader. Its breadth and diversity of chapters would serve well as a source of selected readings in undergraduate and graduate classes and seminars on the topic." 
—Ecology

"Environmental historians studying recent fire and water policies, and federal forestry institutions will find useful essays but also tough questions about their place in this new human age." 
—Environmental History

 

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