Browsing by Author "Binford, Michael W."

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Assessing interactions among changing climate, management, and disturbance in forests: a macrosystems approach
(2015-03) Becknell, Justin M.; Desai, Ankur R.; Dietze, Michael C.; Schultz, Courtney A.; Starr, Gregory; Stoy, Paul C.; Duffy, Paul A.; Franklin, Jerry F.; Pourmokhtarian, Afshin; Hall, Jaclyn; Binford, Michael W.; Boring, Lindsay R.; Staudhammer, Christina L.
Forests are experiencing simultaneous changes in climate, disturbance regimes, and management, all of which affect ecosystem function. Climate change is shifting ranges and altering forest productivity. Disturbance regimes are changing with the potential for novel interactions among disturbance types. In some areas, forest management practices are intensifying, whereas in other areas, lower-impact ecological methods are being used. Interactions among these changing factors are likely to alter ecosystem structure and function at regional to continental scales. A macrosystems approach is essential to assessing the broadscale impacts of these changes and quantify cross-scale interactions, emergent patterns, and feedbacks. A promising line of analysis is the assimilation of data with ecosystem models to scale processes to the macrosystem and generate projections based on alternative scenarios. Analyses of these projections can characterize the range of future variability in forest function and provide information to guide policy, industry, and science in a changing world.
Toward a socioecological theory of forest macrosystems
(2018-04) Kleindl, William J.; Stoy, Paul C.; Binford, Michael W.; Desai, Ankur R.; Dietze, Michael C.; Schultz, Courtney A.; Starr, Gregory; Staudhammer, Christina L.; Wood, David J. A.
The implications of cumulative land-use decisions and shifting climate on forests, require us to integrate our understanding of ecosystems, markets, policy, and resource management into a social-ecological system. Humans play a central role in macrosystem dynamics, which complicates ecological theories that do not explicitly include human interactions. These dynamics also impact ecological services and related markets, which challenges economic theory. Here, we use two forest macroscale management initiatives to develop a theoretical understanding of how management interacts with ecological functions and services at these scales and how the multiple large-scale management goals work either in consort or conflict with other forest functions and services. We suggest that calling upon theories developed for organismal ecology, ecosystem ecology, and ecological economics adds to our understanding of social-ecological macrosystems. To initiate progress, we propose future research questions to add rigor to macrosystem-scale studies: (1) What are the ecosystem functions that operate at macroscales, their necessary structural components, and how do we observe them? (2) How do systems at one scale respond if altered at another scale? (3) How do we both effectively measure these components and interactions, and communicate that information in a meaningful manner for policy and management across different scales?