shoreline forest disturbance rates in natural and managed forests of northwestern ontario
abstract
the purpose of this study was to compare the rates of disturbance along forested
shorelines between natural and managed forests of the mesic boreal region of
northwestern ontario. comparisons were made between areas that experienced wildfire
bums versus areas that were subjected to existing forest management reserve policies. a
shoreline forest is the area of an upland forest region located adjacent to, and influenced
to varying degrees, by aquatic and/or riparian environments. since these areas have
unique biotic and abiotic characteristics and serve important ecological functions, they
may be more sensitive than upland areas to forest harvesting and fire suppression. fire
is an important factor for maintaining the unique habitat of shoreline areas, therefore,
shoreline area management that differs from the natural disturbance regime may cause
unexpected and unwanted consequences.
shoreline forest disturbance rates were analyzed within disturbance events and
watersheds using a variable width shoreline buffer to delineate the shoreline forest
region. a disturbance event is a spatially aggregated and delineated collection of bum
or harvest patches, whereas a watershed is an area of land within which all waters flow
to a single river system. remote sensing and geographical information systems
technologies were applied to obtain new information about natural and artificial rates of
forest disturbance. the band 5 subtraction change detection technique was 92%
accurate in detecting forest disturbance patches from landsat 5 and 7 thematic mapper
satellite images.
our results show that shorelines are disturbed by both fire and harvesting at a
lower rate than the surrounding landscape, but that the magnitude of this difference
depends on the analysis unit. the disturbance rate variability of harvested watersheds
was much greater than that of their associated shoreline forests, indicating that shoreline
areas are treated more uniformly than the watershed as a whole. the rate of disturbance
within harvest events was both lower and more variable than the rate of disturbance
within fire events and the rate of disturbance for burned watersheds and associated
shorelines was not consistent across spatial scales. if the goal of forest management is
to better emulate natural disturbance patterns, disturbance patches within harvest events
or watersheds should be more aggregated and the disturbance rates within shoreline
forests should be increased to slightly below the watershed disturbance rates.
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