Forest fragmentation,structure, and age characteristics as a legacy of forest management |
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Authors: | Michael A Wulder Joanne C White Margaret E Andrew Nicole E Seitz Nicholas C Coops |
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Institution: | 1. Canadian Forest Service (Pacific Forestry Centre), Natural Resources Canada, 506 West Burnside Road, Victoria, British Columbia, V8Z 1M5 Canada;2. Department of Forest Resource Management, 2424 Main Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z4 Canada |
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Abstract: | The combination of forest inventory and satellite-derived landscape composition and structure provides otherwise unavailable information on regional forest conditions and enables investigation of the cumulative effects of forest management over time. Forest pattern results from a range of both natural and anthropogenic factors. This study characterizes the forest pattern of Vancouver Island, British Columbia (>32,000 km2) at the watershed scale, using new national datasets of Canadian forest composition and fragmentation, and relating these to forest inventory-derived age structure. Vancouver Island is extensively forested, possessing highly valuable and productive forests, and is managed to meet a range of stakeholder interests. Forest fragmentation metrics were derived from a satellite-derived, 25-m spatial resolution land cover map (i.e., grain) to represent patterns within 1 km analysis units (i.e., extent) for the entire forested area of Canada. We summarized forest fragmentation island-wide and compared trends between forest-dominated (>85% forest) and less-forested (<85% forest) watersheds. We also explored these patterns with partial canonical correspondence analyses to determine the independent and shared relationships of landscape composition, forest fragmentation, and spatial variables with forest age structure. |
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Keywords: | Landscape composition Fragmentation Partial canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) Landsat Forest age structure Earth Observation for Sustainable Development of Forests (EOSD) |
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