landscape history emilie grossmann for 565 introduction to landscape ecology 17 march, 2005 if you...

Landscape History

Emilie GrossmannFOR 565Introduction to Landscape Ecology17 March, 2005

If you have questions, feel free to email me at: ebgrossmann@wisc.edu

Landscape History

IntroductionIntroduction

What is the History of a Landscape?

The study of past events that shape the landscape that we see today.

OR:

The set of stories that describe how today’s landscape came to be.

1.Natural History: A fire history of the Pacific Northwest

2.Human History: Legacies of Farming in England

3.Wisconsin: The Northwest Wisconsin Pine Barrens – Several Cases

Stories from Three Places

Common Themes

1.Scalea.Space and Time

2.Strengths and weaknesses of different data sources.

Strengths WeaknessesUnbiased Biased

Appropriate scale Inappropriate scale

Easy to get data Difficult to get data

Common Themes

Goals for todayGoals for today• Appreciate the many ways in which

landscape history can be approached.

• Appreciate the value of studying history.

Natural History: Fire History in the Pacific Northwest

“ We came to a section further up the slopes towards the mountains that has no trees more than fifty years old, or even fifteen or twenty years old. These last show plainly enough that they have been devastated by fire, as the black melancholy monuments rising here and there above the young growth bear witness. Then, with this fiery suggestive testimony, on examining those sections whose trees are a hundred years old or two hundred, we find the same fire records, though heavily veiled with mosses and lichens, showing that a century or two ago the forests that stood there had been swept away in some tremendous fire at a time when rare conditions of drought made their burning possible”. – John Muir at Puget Sound, ca. 1912 (from Pyne 1982)

Disturbance Regimes

•Timing:• Interval• Rotation

•Effects:• Intensity• Severity

Map: Historic Fire regimes in Oregon, Washington, and

Idaho

Intro to Fire in the PNW: A map of historic fire regimes

http://pnwin.nbii.gov/forestdata.html#state

Red- stand replacement, LONG interval

Green-0-35 yrs, stand replacement

Turquoise – low Severity

Yellow: 35-100+, mixed severity.

Ponderosa pines

From: Agee 1993

Ponderosa pines

Evidence of frequent fires of low intensity is recorded by the annular rings and fire scars in a cross section of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa). This tree managed very well without man's interference, surviving, on the average, a fire every six years from 1832 until 1958.from: www.nps.gov/seki/ fire/restore.htm

Where’s the edge of the fire?

X

X X

X

Lodgepole pines

http://www.experiencewyoming.com/wyoweb.image.fire.fire.16.htm

Lodgepole pines

www.jimswan.com/111/ succession/fire_ecology.htm

Lodgepole pines

Note: This particular pollen diagram is from further West than most lodgepole pine. See paper for a more complete discussion

Fire Regime Data

1.Fire Scars2.Even-aged stand-maps3.Fossil Charcoal in lakes

What are some strengths, weaknesses and biases inherent in each type of data?

Human History: Why study it?

1. Land-use is one form of historic disturbance.

2. Land-use history shapes ecological history at a multiple scales.

3. Human activities can leave behind legacies in the landscape that persist for decades.

New England

“Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time”. – Thoreau (Walden)

1.European settlement2.Farming – Peak at 18303.Abandonment4.Forest Regrowth

a.(note: Is Michelle covering this at all?)5.Legacies are still left in the landscape today

New England: The (very) basic story

From: http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/museum/landscape.html

1.European settlement2.Farming – Peak at 18303.Abandonment4.Forest Regrowth

a.(note: Is Michelle covering this at all?)5.Legacies are still left in the landscape today

New England: The (very) basic story

From: http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/museum/landscape.html

1.European settlement2.Farming – Peak at 18303.Abandonment4.Forest Regrowth

a.(note: Is Michelle covering this at all?)5.Legacies are still left in the landscape today

New England: The (very) basic story

From: http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/museum/landscape.html

Stonewall

Hopkins Memorial Forest

•A story shaped by many people:

–Alfred Moon – subsistence farmer–Amos Lawrence Hopkins – railroad tycoon–Norman Borlaug – agricultural geneticist–Henry Art – biology professor

– For a more complete version of the story, see Biehler et al. 1995

Hopkins Memorial Forest: Changes in Red Maple.

From: Grossmann 1996

Visible Legacies: Current Vegetation in Central Massachusetts

1.soil properties

2.carbon storage rates

Hidden Legacies

Legacies in soil

Legacies in the atmosphere

1.soil properties (Boone & Compton 2000

2.carbon storage rates (relating vegetation cover to global processes)

1. What data-sources did we just encounter?

2. Where do farming legacies fit into our space-time diagram?

The Northwest Wisconsin Sand Plain:

From: Bolliger et al. 2004

Long term change in the Long term change in the Northwest Wisconsin sand plainNorthwest Wisconsin sand plain

From Radeloff et al. 1999

1850

1987

Long term change in the Long term change in the Northwest Wisconsin sand plainNorthwest Wisconsin sand plain

From Radeloff et al. 1999

#

#

#

Section corner

Quarter corner

Meander corner 6 m

iles

1 mile

Township 48 N

Township 1 N

1 W

Ran

ge 1 E Baseline

4th Principal meridian

Source: Ted Sickley, U.W. Forest Landscape Ecology Lab

Survey Line Notes in Relation to Landscape

Source: Ted Sickley, U.W. Forest Landscape Ecology Lab

GLO Record

A longer record: Paleoecology

Recent History: Airphoto analysis and GISRecent History: Airphoto analysis and GIS

1938 Airphoto

Recent History: Airphoto analysis and GISRecent History: Airphoto analysis and GIS

Recent History: Airphoto analysis and GISRecent History: Airphoto analysis and GIS

1980 Airphoto+ Fire(and Farming

From 1938)

Recent History: Airphoto analysis and GISRecent History: Airphoto analysis and GIS

1997 Airphoto(with farm,

and fire)

Recent History: Airphoto analysis and GISRecent History: Airphoto analysis and GISFinal Map:

of Current

Vegetation

+ Disturbance

History

Sand Plain Vegetation:Sand Plain Vegetation:Historic LegaciesHistoric Legacies

Preliminary Data: DO NOT CITE

Preliminary Analysis: DO NOT CITE

Sand Plain Vegetation:Sand Plain Vegetation:Historic LegaciesHistoric Legacies

Sand Plain Vegetation:Sand Plain Vegetation:Historic Legacies in soilHistoric Legacies in soil

Clearcut Farm Fire

2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

%

Organic Matter

Preliminary Analysis: DO NOT CITE

Discussion/Study Questions

• How could historic knowledge inform Northwest Wisconsin Forest Management in the future?

• What’s your favorite historic dataset?• Which dataset will be most useful in planning how to manage the pine barrens landscape? What trade-offs do you need to make when choosing one data-set to work with?

Readings:

1.Required:• Swetnam, T. W., Craig D. Allen, and Julio L. Betancourt. 1999. Applied historical ecology:

using the past to manage for the future. Ecological Applications 9:1189-1206 .• Bolliger, J., L. A. Schulte, S. N. Burrows, T. A. Sickley, and D. J. Mladenoff. 2004. Assessing

Ecological Restoration Potentials of Wisconsin (U.S.A.) Using Historical Landscape Reconstructions. Restoration Ecology 12:124-142.

2.Optional:• Radeloff, V. C., D. J. Mladenoff, H. S. He, and M. S. Boyce. 1999. Forest landscape change in

the northwest Wisconsin Pine Barrens from pre-European settlement to the present. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 29:1649-1659.

• Motzkin, G., W. A. I. Patterson, and D. R. Foster. 1999. A historical perspective on pitch pine-scrub oak communities in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts. Ecosystems 2:255-273.

References

Agee, J. 1993. Fire ecology of Pacific Northwest forests. Island Press, Washington, D.C.Agee, J. K. 1990. The historical role of fire in Pacific Northwest forests. Pages 25-38 in J.

D. Walstad, S. R. Radosevich, and D. V. Sandberg, eds. Natural and prescribed fire in Pacific Northwest forests. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, Oregon.

Biehler, D., Daniel I. Bolnick, Jonathan C. Cluett, Nathaniel G. Gerhart, Emilie B. Grossmann, J.D. Ho, and Willard S. Morgan. 1995. Farms to Forest, A Naturalist's Guide to the Ecology and Human History of Hopkins Memorial Forest, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Eagle Press, Inc., Pittsfield, MA.

Compton, J. E., R. D. Boone, G. Motzkin, and D. R. Foster. 1998. Soil carbon and nitrogen in a pine-oak sand plain in central Massachusetts: Role of vegetation and land-use history. Oecologia 116:536-542.

Grossmann, E. B. Environmental mechanisms through which past land-use influences spring ephemeral wildflower distributuion patterns in the Hopkins Memorial Forest. 1996. Williamstown, MA, Williams College - Senior Honors Thesis.

Houghton, R. A. 1999. The annual net flux of carbon to the atmosphere from changes in land use 1850-1990. Tellus 51B:298-313.

Motzkin, G., W. A. I. Patterson, and D. R. Foster. 1999. A historical perspective on pitch pine-scrub oak communities in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts. Ecosystems 2:255-273.Radeloff, V. C., D. J. Mladenoff, H. S. He, and M. S. Boyce. 1999. Forest landscape change in the northwest Wisconsin Pine Barrens from pre-European settlement to the present. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 29:1649-1659.

Thoreau, H. D. 1969. Walden. Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company, Columbus, OH.Whitlock, C. 1992. Vegetational and climatic history of the Pacific Northwest during the

last 20,000 years: Implications for understanding current-day biodiversity. The Northwest Environmental Journal 8:5-28.