Adaptive Silviculture for Wildlife: Supporting Forest Biodiversity Through Climate Adaptation

• Main Author: Clark, Jahiya
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2024
• Subjects: climate; wildlife; occupancy; forest; range; adaptive; Biodiversity; Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Forest Biology; Forest Management; American marten
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/1400; https://scholarworks.umass.edu/context/masters_theses_2/article/2436/viewcontent/Clark_J.pdf

Anthropogenic climate change has had profound impacts on populations, species, and ecological communities. Rising temperatures and changes in precipitation have altered species’ climate niches, forcing populations to shift ranges or adapt in place. The northeastern region of the United States is particularly vulnerable to losing unique habitats, including the boreal forest that is at its southern limit in this region. To protect forest health, silvicultural approaches are being considered to reduce recent and future climate change impacts. However, little research has investigated how these adaptive silviculture approaches will affect wildlife. I analyzed remote camera data taken at the New England Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) sites in Northern New Hampshire and in two other forests (The Nulhegan Basin of the Silvio O. Conte Fish and Wildlife Refuge in Vermont and the along the Jefferson Notch of the White Mountains of New Hampshire). Across seven years, the camera captured 36 mammal and bird species, as well as snowpack observations. For my thesis, I analyzed the occupancy across the three forests from 2018 to 2022 of eight species: American red squirrel, American marten, fisher, snowshoe hare, white-tailed deer, coyote, black bear, and moose. These species are commonly found in Northern New England and are of management concern. Boreal species like marten, fisher, snowshoe hare, and moose are at their southern range limit and are at risk of losing suitable habitat. Whereas the northern hardwood species like red squirrel, white-tailed deer, coyote, and black bear are likely to gain suitable. I conducted a generalized linear mixed model with the glmmTMB R package to analyze the influence of the silvicultural treatments on six of the focal species detection rates at the ASCC location. I analyzed occupancy models of the focal species created from the unmarked R package. As predicted, I observed high occupancy estimates for American marten and red squirrels in the White Mountains location. ...