Dynamic-Regime Shifts in Forests: Trajectories from Science to Management

Projektinformationen

RESET

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 891477

DOI

10.3030/891477

Projekt abgeschlossen

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 18 März 2020

Startdatum 1 März 2021

Enddatum 28 Februar 2023

Finanziert unter

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Gesamtkosten

€ 184 707,84

EU-Beitrag

€ 184 707,84

Koordiniert durch

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RESET (Dynamic-Regime Shifts in Forests: Trajectories from Science to Management)

Berichtszeitraum: 2021-03-01 bis 2023-02-28

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

The increasing incidence of extreme events (e.g. fires, insect outbreaks) in combination with ongoing pressures such as climate and land-use changes are seriously threatening the persistence of forest services on which human wellbeing depend. In this context, forest resilience to disturbances has become a paradigm for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Whereas many indicators have been proposed in different empirical studies, most of them are based on a static view of ecosystem states and overlook that ecosystem states, in fact, represent dynamic regimes. In contrast, many advanced theoretical approaches remain largely unexplored in forest systems. In this sense, incorporating theoretical resilience concepts into empirical studies poses a key challenge to developing realistic management of ecosystems in general, and forests in particular.

The MSCA-IF project RESET aimed to contribute to the conservation of forests and prevent their degradation and loss by improving our capability to identify resilient communities, assessing the mechanisms underlying post-disturbance forest dynamics, and supporting forest management and policy through useful information and ground-breaking analytical tools. In particular, RESET consisted of three general objectives:

(1) To develop a methodological framework to identify, characterize, and compare ecological dynamic regimes from empirical data.

(2) To assess the ecological resilience of forests to pulse, ramp, and press disturbances accounting for forest dynamic regimes.

(3) To support forest management and policy by providing novel analytical tools and pragmatic information to help decision-makers anticipate global change impacts.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

In RESET, I developed an innovative methodological framework to describe ecological dynamic regimes (EDR) from a set of ecological trajectories defined by the temporal changes of state variables in a multidimensional state space. In this framework, I formally defined ecological dynamic regimes and included analytical tools to identify, characterize, and compare ecological dynamic regimes based on their geometric characteristics. I used artificial data to illustrate the different elements of the framework, and applied the analyses to real data, using permanent sampling plots of Canadian boreal forests as an example. The analyses and metrics developed were implemented in a new R package (‘ecoregime’) to make them accessible to a wide range of researchers and practitioners. Overall, this framework contributes to filling the gap between theoretical and empirical ecology by providing robust analytical tools to assess ecological resilience and study ecosystem dynamics from a multidimensional perspective and considering the variability of natural systems.

Besides the development of analytical tools, RESET included the application of the EDR framework to real ecosystems. In particular, I used the EDR framework to assess the ecological resilience to pulse, ramp, and press disturbances in boreal and Mediterranean forests. The application to boreal forests affected by insect outbreaks confirmed the observations reported by Holling in his seminal paper, supporting the relevance of the EDR framework to assess ecological resilience accounting for ecological dynamic regimes. The application of the EDR framework to Mediterranean forests under different environmental conditions and landscape contexts allowed assessing the effects of ramp and press disturbances on the stability landscape from empirical data.

The EDR framework developed in RESET, as well as the results obtained in the empirical applications, have been submitted or will be submitted soon to scientific journals. The outputs of RESET have been presented in some of the eight conferences and seminars in which I participated. Additional information on RESET is available on the webpage of the project and on social media.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

The concept of ecological dynamic regimes has been present in ecology for a long time, mainly associated with ecological succession, alternative stable states, and climax communities. Yet, the quantification has been largely eluded given the number of factors involved and the lack of long temporal data. As a consequence, most empirical studies on ecosystem resilience have focused on static states as the reference against which post-disturbance dynamics are compared. The methodological frameworks introduced in RESET are a step forward in the field of ecological resilience, offering promising opportunities to assess ecosystems’ resilience to disturbances accounting for higher levels of complexity than previous methodological approaches.

In RESET, I applied the developed methodological frameworks to forests affected by pulse (insect outbreaks), ramp (climate change), and press (land-use change) disturbances. However, the methods are flexible enough to be implemented in other ecological systems through functions compiled in the R package ‘ecoregime’. As such, the outputs of RESET aim to guide researchers of other disciplines to assess ecosystem resilience to multiple threats of global change, with the final goal of providing accurate information to decision-makers and preventing the degradation and loss of natural habitats and associated biodiversity.

Assessing post-disturbance dynamics requires accounting for ecological dynamic regimes