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Successional Changes In Carbon Storage Are Sustained In A Temperate Forest Across Different Initiating Disturbances, Cameron Clay

Theses and Dissertations

Managing forests for carbon (C) sequestration requires an understanding of how disturbance history shapes C pools and fluxes over successional time. At the University of Michigan Biological Station, we examined how two stand establishing disturbances influenced C pools and fluxes over 100+ years of succession, comparing these secondary forests with “legacy” late-successional stands encompassing ages and compositions that would be present in the absence of region-wide stand-replacing disturbance. Our work utilized measurements taken between 2014 and 2020 from separate experimental forest chronosequences initiated following clear-cut harvesting only or clear-cut harvesting and fire, along with three >130-yr-old late successional stands comprising …