NDLI: Interactions Across Spatial Scales among Forest Dieback, Fire, and Erosion in Northern New Mexico Landscapes

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Allen, Craig D.
Copyright Year	2007
Abstract	Ecosystem patterns and disturbance processes at one spatial scale often interact with processes at another scale, and the result of such cross-scale interactions can be nonlinear dynamics with thresholds. Examples of cross-scale pattern-process relationships and interactions among forest dieback, fire, and erosion are illustrated from northern New Mexico (USA) landscapes, where long-term studies have recently documented all of these disturbance processes. For example, environmental stress, operating on individual trees, can cause tree death that is amplified by insect mortality agents to propagate to patch and then landscape or even regional-scale forest dieback. Severe drought and unusual warmth in the southwestern USA since the late 1990s apparently exceeded species-specific physiological thresholds for multiple tree species, resulting in substantial vegetation mortality across millions of hectares of woodlands and forests in recent years. Predictions of forest dieback across spatial scales are constrained by uncertainties associated with: limited knowledge of species-specific physiological thresholds; individual and site-specific variation in these mortality thresholds; and positive feedback loops between rapidly-responding insect herbivore populations and their stressed plant hosts, sometimes resulting in nonlinear “pest” outbreak dynamics. Fire behavior also exhibits nonlinearities across spatial scales, illustrated by changes in historic fire regimes where patch-scale grazing disturbance led to regional-scale collapse of surface fire activity and subsequent recent increases in the scale of extreme fire events in New Mexico. Vegetation dieback interacts with fire activity by modifying fuel amounts and configurations at multiple spatial scales. Runoff and erosion processes are also subject to scale-dependent threshold behaviors, exemplified by ecohydrological work in semiarid New Mexico watersheds showing how declines in ground surface cover lead to non-linear increases in bare patch connectivity and thereby accelerated runoff and erosion at hillslope and watershed scales. Vegetation dieback, grazing, and fire can change land surface properties and cross-scale hydrologic connectivities, directly altering ecohydrological patterns of runoff and erosion. The interactions among disturbance processes across spatial scales can be key drivers in ecosystem dynamics, as illustrated by these studies of recent landscape changes in northern New Mexico. To better anticipate and mitigate accelerating human impacts to the planetary ecosystem at all spatial scales, improvements are needed in our conceptual and quantitative understanding of cross-scale interactions among disturbance processes.
Starting Page	797
Ending Page	808
Page Count	12
File Format	PDF
ISSN	14329840
Journal	Ecosystems
Volume Number	10
Issue Number	5
e-ISSN	14350629
Language	English
Publisher	Springer-Verlag
Publisher Date	2007-06-20
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	disturbance interactions; forest dieback; fire erosion; fire history; cross-scale relationships; thresholds; New Mexico; southwestern USA Nature Conservation Geoecology/Natural Processes Environmental Management Zoology Plant Sciences Ecology
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Ecology Environmental Chemistry Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

Interactions Across Spatial Scales among Forest Dieback, Fire, and Erosion in Northern New Mexico Landscapes

Spatial Controls of Pre–Euro-American Wind and Fire Disturbance in Northern Wisconsin (USA) Forest Landscapes

Modelling Spatial Interactions Among Fire, Spruce Budworm, and Logging in the Boreal Forest

Long-Term Impacts of Fuelwood Extraction on a Tropical Montane Cloud Forest

United States Forest Disturbance Trends Observed Using Landsat Time Series

Studying Fire Mitigation Strategies in Multi-Ownership Landscapes: Balancing the Management of Fire-Dependent Ecosystems and Fire Risk

The Effects of Spatial Legacies following Shifting Management Practices and Fire on Boreal Forest Age Structure

The Relative Impact of Harvest and Fire upon Landscape-Level Dynamics of Older Forests: Lessons from the Northwest Forest Plan

Influence of Tree Species on Forest Nitrogen Retention in the Catskill Mountains, New York, USA

Interactions Across Spatial Scales among Forest Dieback, Fire, and Erosion in Northern New Mexico Landscapes

Similar Documents

Interactions Across Spatial Scales among Forest Dieback, Fire, and Erosion in Northern New Mexico Landscapes

Spatial Controls of Pre–Euro-American Wind and Fire Disturbance in Northern Wisconsin (USA) Forest Landscapes

Modelling Spatial Interactions Among Fire, Spruce Budworm, and Logging in the Boreal Forest

Long-Term Impacts of Fuelwood Extraction on a Tropical Montane Cloud Forest

United States Forest Disturbance Trends Observed Using Landsat Time Series

Studying Fire Mitigation Strategies in Multi-Ownership Landscapes: Balancing the Management of Fire-Dependent Ecosystems and Fire Risk

The Effects of Spatial Legacies following Shifting Management Practices and Fire on Boreal Forest Age Structure

The Relative Impact of Harvest and Fire upon Landscape-Level Dynamics of Older Forests: Lessons from the Northwest Forest Plan

Influence of Tree Species on Forest Nitrogen Retention in the Catskill Mountains, New York, USA

Interactions Across Spatial Scales among Forest Dieback, Fire, and Erosion in Northern New Mexico Landscapes