Late-Successional (LS) Forests

Old forests of the temperate and boreal zones are globally critical for forest biodiversity conservation. They contain exceptional forest structure such as impressive trees, many species of invertebrates, mosses, liverworts, lichens, and fungi dependent on large live and dead trees, and ecological processes that are largely absent from young forest.

Globally, the area of old forest is rapidly declining. In the U.S, old stands now constitute <4% of forested areas. In Finland alone, where old forests comprise <0.5% of all forested areas, extinction-vulnerable old forest species now number > 1000. In managed forests, economic pressures are the barrier to maintaining old forest or restoring old forest conditions to heavily logged forests. The likely global trend is the loss of much old forest and thousands of associated species in the next 20 years. Next to forest habitat loss, the loss of old forest may represent the major global threat to temperate forest biodiversity.

At Manomet we have focused on developing tools and supporting a social conversation to foster the conservation of old forests and their biodiversity.

Some accomplishments:

•  Manomet has trained 231 foresters from 9 states to use the Late-successional Index and how to conserve Late-successional attributes in managed forests

•  Foresters responsible for over 2 million acres of public and private lands routinely use the Late-successional Index.

•  Manomet has help create Late-successional Management Systems that are applied to over 100,000 acres of forest which includes special conservation areas.

•  Manomet has established a monitoring network of 148 plots in 24 old growth forests for monitoring regional trends.

•  Manomet and UMaine have created a Forest Biodiversity Scorecard which can track Late-successional attributes and forests at the landscape scale.

For more information on the Late-Sucessional Forests read:

Late-successional Forest: A disappearing age class and implications for biodiversity

Selected references on Late-Sucessional Forests

TOOLS FOR MANAGING LATE-SUCCESSIONAL FORESTS

Manomet has developed several tools for foresters and land managers to identify, track, and manage LS forests.

LS Monitoring - developing ways for landowners and Maine Forest Service to monitor LS forests and their attributes using existing monitoring systems.

LS Index - a rapid assessment tool to help foresters identify and judge the ecological uniqueness of old forests

Background info on the LS-Index (click to follow link)

LS-Index for Northern Hardwood Stands

LS-Index for Sprunce-Fir Stands

Whitman. A.A. and J.M. Hagan. 2007.  An index to identify late-successional forest in temperate and boreal zones. Forest Ecology and Management 246:144–154.

Structural Retention - tools for conserving old forest biodiversity through the retention of patches and stands of old forests

Manomet's Patch Retention Project

Late-Successional Management System- helping landowners to develop goals, guidelines, and decision making systems to conserve old forests consistent with other goals.

LSMS Brochure

DEVELOPING MANAGEMENT GUIDELINES FOR CONSERVING LATE-SUCCESSIONAL FOREST IN THE NORTHERN FOREST REGION

Next to deforestation (i.e., forest conversion), the rapid loss of late-successional (LS) forests from managed forest landscapes is a leading cause of the loss of temperate forest biodiversity worldwide. LS forests are crucial in the Northern Forest region for a limited number of species and ecological processes which will widely disappear unless this forest age class is more appropriately conserved. Ecological reserves and public lands occupy a small percentage of the Northern Forest area and so reserves alone are likely to fail to conserve LS forest biodiversity. Therefore, active management for LS forest will be an essential part of successful forest conservation in the Northern Forest region. Conventional forest practices have not been well adapted to maintain or restore LS forests. In intensively managed areas (e.g. northern Maine ), the challenge is to maintain LS forests or loose this rapidly disappearing age class. In the remaining areas, the challenge is restore LS forest as forests established following post-19 th century abandonment of agricultural lands are maturing. Although forest certification and public ownership require a significant portion of the Northern Forest landbase to maintain biodiversity in all of its forms, including LS forest components, land managers lack the tools to effectively conserve LS forests and meet regional economic needs. Therefore, immediate solutions must focus on tools for maintaining and restoring LS forests in managed forests across the region. Our objectives were to synthesize existing knowledge, to develop LS forest management guidelines, and to provide training to land managers in order to raise capacity of land managers to manage and conserve late-successional forests.

Project Collaborators:

William Keeton, Ph.D.,

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources,

University of Vermont

http://www.uvm.edu/envnr/wkeeton/

Gregory McGee, Ph.D.,

Environmental and Forest Biology

State Universtiy of New York

http://www.esf.edu/efb/faculty/mcgee.htm

Funding support for this project was provided by the Northeastern States Research Cooperative (NSRC), a partnership of Northern Forest states (New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and New York), in coordination with the USDA Forest Service.   http://www.nsrcforest.org

SOCIAL CONVERSATION ABOUT LATE-SUCCESSIONAL FORESTS

Late-Successional Old Growth Dialogue -A regional meeting on late-sucessional/old growth forest science and conservation was held April 27-28, 2005. The meeting was sponsered by Manomet and National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry.

Click here to view the Program.

The PowerPoint Presentations are available here.

A document summarizing the meeting is available here.

Late-Successional Stakeholder Meeting-Manomet convinede a meeting of stakeholders from the environmental and forestry community to discuss issues pertaining to LS forest conservation and management.  The meeting was held November 14, 2003 in Augusta, Maine.

PowerPoint on Background Information on Late-Sucessional Forests

PowerPoint on Late-Sucessional Management Tools

Meeting Minutes