New paper on harvesting in Siberia

Gustafson, EJ, MS Lucash, AZ Shvidenko, BR Sturtevant, D Schepashcenko, C Mast, and N Williams. 2025. Climate change threatens the sustainability of current timber harvesting practices across a latitudinal gradient in Siberia. European Journal of Forest Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10342-025-01782-5

Abstract

The boreal forests of Eurasia form the largest contiguous terrestrial biome in the world, providing numerous ecosystem functions and services for human societies. Temperatures are increasing most rapidly in high northern latitudes, altering tree growth and competition dynamics, and modifying disturbance regimes. The effect of these cumulative changes on the ecosystem functions provided by boreal forests is difficult to predict. We used the process-based LANDIS-II forest landscape model to evaluate how climate change and timber harvesting will interact to alter the production of ecosystem functions and services in boreal forests on three study areas across a large latitudinal gradient (11°) in central Siberia. We found that the relative importance of wood harvesting as a disturbance type varied depending on latitude and its impact was always far less than that of fire. Moderate climate change increased the availability of wood for harvest in the northern landscape, but wood availability declined in the southern landscapes under any amount of climate change likely because of an increase in the frequency of fire that kept forests too young for harvest. Modest climate change (RCP6.0) increased productivity and the storage of carbon in all landscapes but severe climate change (RCP8.5) reduced both in the southernmost landscape. Harvesting as a specific driver of change in these boreal forests is likely to be relatively minor except as a forest fragmentation process. Our results provide compelling evidence that status quo forest management in these landscapes is likely not sustainable, suggesting that climate-smart forestry will be needed.

Paper on Albedo in Siberia

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969724072000

Boreal forests form the largest terrestrial biome globally. Climate change is expected to induce large changes in vegetation of high latitude ecosystems, but there is considerable uncertainty about where, when, and how those changes will occur. Such vegetation change produces major feedback to the climate system, including by modifying albedo (reflectivity). Our study used the LANDIS-II forest landscape model to project forest dynamics on four representative landscapes (1 M ha) for 280 years into the future under a range of climate scenarios across a broad latitudinal gradient in Siberia. The model estimated the albedo of the vegetation and any snow on each landscape grid-cell through time to quantify surface albedo change in response to climate change and disturbances. We found that the shortening of the snow-covered season (winter) decreased annual average albedo dramatically, and climate change facilitated the invasion of tundra by boreal trees in the northernmost landscape (reducing albedo in all seasons). However, in other landscapes, albedo increased in summer due to disturbances (fire, wind, insects, harvest), eliminating or reducing leaf area in the short-term, and in the mid-term by promoting more reflective forest types (deciduous, light conifers). This increased albedo was somewhat ephemeral and under climate change was overwhelmed by the shortening of the snow-covered season that greatly reduced albedo. We conclude that the primary driver of the overall reflectivity of boreal ecosystems is not vegetation, but rather, the length of the snow-covered season. Because climate change is likely to dramatically shorten the snow season, the concurrent reduction of albedo has the potential to act as a powerful positive feedback for climate change. Managing natural and anthropogenic disturbances may be the only tool with potential to mitigate the reduction of albedo by climate change in boreal ecosystems because management to encourage more reflective forest types has relatively small effect.

Recent conferences

M.S. student Hana Matsumoto has presented results from this project at three separate conferences in 2023 including the annual meetings for International Association for Landscape Ecology - North America (IALE-NA) and the Ecological Society of America (ESA). Most recently Matsumoto presented results at the poster sessions for the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) annual meeting in December 2023. Her poster for AGU as well as pictures from the other conferences can be seen below.

Good work Hana!

New TEEL Siberia paper from Neil Williams!

Congrats to former postdoc in our lab, Dr. Neil Williams, for leading a publication on wildfire and climate change in Siberia.

Williams, NG, MS Lucash, MR Ouellette, T Brussel, EJ Gustafson, SA Weiss, BR Sturtevant, DG Schepaschenko and AZ Shvidenko. 2023. Simulating dynamic fire regime and vegetation change in a warming Siberia. Fire Ecology 19 (1), 1-29. https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42408-023-00188-1

We're hiring soon!

Postdoctoral Researcher

This outreach notice is an early alert to inform potential applicants that the Department of Geography at Portland State University will soon be advertising for a 2+ year post-doctoral researcher funded by the National Science Foundation. 

The successful candidate will be a member of an international interdisciplinary team of landscape ecologists, forest ecologists, and spatial modelers at Portland State University, the U.S. Forest Service and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria. The candidate will estimate the ability of arctic and boreal ecosystems to keep pace with climate change and to quantify temporal and spatial variation in biome shifts and C stocks across a large latitudinal gradient in Siberian Russia (https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1844435).  Capitalizing on a rich and underutilized empirical dataset of Siberia, we will project future species composition and C dynamics under climate change using a landscape-scale forest simulation model (LANDIS-II) and compare our results to similar output from a global scale DGVM (CLM-FATES).  The results will be used to improve how DGVMs account for landscape-scale processes such as dispersal, disturbance and species-level interactions, which will ultimately impact the land cover inputs used by Global Circulation Models to project future global climate.  The successful candidate will have primary responsibility for the LANDIS-II modeling portion of the project. 

Major duties and tasks of the position:

·         Develop and validate initial conditions for the study area

·         Improve capabilities to model non-tree species (e.g., shrubs, sphagnum, grass).

·         Verify and validate permafrost behavior and hydrological impacts in the model.

·         Calibrate disturbances for each study area. 

·         Assist in developing and testing a new LANDIS-II output extension to estimate land surface albedo.

·         Conduct simulation experiments and analyze spatial and tabular outputs using GIS, R and other analytical tools to test hypotheses.

·         Collaborate with project personnel to publish and disseminate results.

The position will be located at the US Forest Service Institute for Applied Ecosystems in Rhinelander, WI for approximately the first 14 months of the appointment, and then at Portland State University in Portland, OR for an additional 12 months.  Compensation includes an annual salary of $54,000 with health benefits provided by Portland State.  The position will be officially advertised in mid-October and will begin on Jan 15, 2020, although it could begin as late as March 1, 2020.

Contact Information

To express interest in this position please send an email, including a current CV and 1-pg letter of interest describing how your experience prepares you for the duties of the position, to Dr. Melissa Lucash (Principal Investigator) at lucash@pdx.edu.