Collaborative Research: The effect of landscape context on the sensitivity of vegetation to climate change

This project uses pollen and charcoal in lake sediments to ask how soil texture and firebreaks influenced the response of oak- and pine-dominated ecosystems to climatic changes of the past 7000 years. Previous results demonstrate that during the last 2000 years the vegetation and fire regimes on a 450 square kilometer sand plain in northwestern Wisconsin were remarkably dynamic. Individual sites within the landscape responded differently to relatively small climatic changes. White pine increased during the Little Ice Age at most sites, apparently due to slight differences in soil texture and the abundance of lakes and other firebreaks. The current research extends the time period studied to include more extreme climatic changes, and tests hypotheses about the importance of soil types, firebreaks, and vegetation feedbacks in determining the response of local vegetation.

Predicting the response of local vegetation to climate change is an important goal of ecosystem modeling. Federal, state and county agencies are actively engaged in pine barrens habitat restoration in the area being studied, and the results of this work will be directly applicable to establishing realistic restoration goals and management strategies. Students from Luther College, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin will participate in a collaborative learning environment in which skills in collection and interpretation of long-term records of environmental change are applied to questions about ecosystem management.