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Final Program


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Organized Proposal Session

North American boundary forests: diversity, conservation, and fire management

1 - North American boundary forests: distribution, drivers, threats

Saturday, October 28, 2023
8:00am - 8:15am PST
Location: A2
Boundary forests provide unique ecosystem services in North America’s Great Plains.
  Our research in large inventory plots in two biogeographically significant boundary forests in Nebraska demonstrates that overdominance of woody encroaching and mesophytic species limits regeneration, particularly of light-demanding, often more drought-tolerant, species, potentially affecting these forests’ climate change resilience.

Learning Objectives:

  • Upon completion, participants will be able to explain the importance of North American boundary forests for landscape diversity and ecosystem services and the role of topographic and microclimatic variation in maintaining forest function.
  • Upon completion, participants will be able to identify the threats to North American boundary forests in terms of climate change and mesophication owing to fire suppression.
  • Upon completion, participants will be introduced to some ways to monitor forest stress using remote sensing at the stand level.
  • Upon completion, participants will be able to describe forest management approaches using prescribed fire and their effects on maintaining forest health, diversity, and resilience of North American boundary forests.