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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. For. Glob. Change
Sec. People and Forests
Volume 7 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2024.1513721
This article is part of the Research Topic Landscape management can promote socioecological benefits and leverage environmental markets View all articles

Impacts of climate-driven insect population change on sawtimber provisioning, carbon sequestration, and water retention: a case study of bark beetle outbreaks in the USA

Provisionally accepted
Haojie Chen Haojie Chen 1*Matthew R. Sloggy Matthew R. Sloggy 2Samuel W. Flake Samuel W. Flake 3Samuel Evans Samuel Evans 4Charles J. Maxwell Charles J. Maxwell 5
  • 1 Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States
  • 2 Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Service (USDA), Riverside, United States
  • 3 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
  • 4 California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Sacramento,, United States
  • 5 Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    A key issue in landscape management, whether public or private, is the mitigation of disturbance events that impact vegetation, ecosystem health, and thus ecosystem services (ESs). Although many studies have found significant tree mortality due to insect infestations, there is still insufficient understanding of how these infestations alter ESs and their associated economic values. Addressing this research gap can assist forest managers and decision-makers in refining and implementing adaptive management practices and policies, while enhancing the resilience of forests and their ESs. We investigated the impacts of bark beetle outbreaks on three ESs (timber provisioning, water retention, and carbon sequestration) in the Lake Tahoe region of Northern California and Northern Nevada. Using the landscape simulation model LANDIS-II, we examined differences between a business-as-usual management scenario, and an enhanced management scenario with respect to the amount of aboveground tree biomass and ESs impacted by beetle outbreaks. Since insect infestation is also influenced by climate, each of the two management scenarios considered three different climate scenarios: a scenario with average historical climate (no climate change); a warmer, wetter scenario from the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate ((MIROC); and a hotter, drier scenario from the Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques (CNRM). Results show that a warmer and drier climate results in more beetle mortality than a wetter and cooler climate, resulting in greater negative impacts to ESs. The estimated loss of ES value is approximately $0.2 to $0.8 million USD per year. Enhanced management is more capable than business-as-usual practices to prevent beetle damages to trees and ESs.

    Keywords: Biodiversity, climate impact, cost-benefit analysisecosystem service value, Ecosystem service valuation, environmental change, Environmental impact assessment

    Received: 19 Oct 2024; Accepted: 13 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Chen, Sloggy, Flake, Evans and Maxwell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Haojie Chen, Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), Oak Ridge, 117, Tennessee, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.