Balancing Forest Ecosystem Services under Climate Change - A Multi-Model Approach

Sunday, August 3, 2025, 4:50 PM

Session: Student Poster Session A (In Person Only)

Forests cover 31% of Earth’s land and provide essential ecosystem services (ES), but are increasingly threatened by climate change and natural disturbances. Conventional management often prioritizes economic benefits over long-term ecological sustainability. This study investigates temporal dynamics of ES (timber production, carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation) under various silvicultural interventions and environmental disturbances in Olympic Experimental State Forest(OESF). We aim to optimize balance amid economic outputs and ecological resilience to inform adaptive forest management strategies. We employ multi-model approach combining spatially-explicit LANDIS-II model with STELLA system dynamics. LANDIS-II simulates forest succession, disturbances, and management over 100-years across 16-watersheds assessing short-(0-25 years) and long-term (26-100years) impacts. STELLA model incorporates LANDIS-II outputs and socio-economic factors to explore system-wide effect and feedback loops. We examine silvicultural regimes (intensive, none, multiscale) under CMIP6 climate-scenarios, drawing upon extensive literature and data from OESF and FIA toinform ES metrics. We anticipate that our approach will yield several key insights: (1) revelation of complex feedback loops between forest structure, biodiversity, carbon storage, and economic outputs, with potential tipping points under extreme climate and disturbance scenarios; (2) our results to suggest that gradient management approach emerges as promising strategy for balancing multiple objectives, including economic and ecological viability.