Quantifying upland boreal forest successional pathways near Fairbanks, Alaska

Abstract

Previous studies have suggested that post-fire forest succession in Interior Alaska can occur in two different ways. Self-replacement occurs when pre-fire dominant species immediately replace themselves as the canopy dominants after fire. Species-dominance relay occurs when, after simultaneously establishing themselves after fire, deciduous trees relinquish canopy dominance to conifer species as the stand ages. The relative importance of these different successional processes at landscape scales in Interior Alaska is unknown. To test for the importance of these two trajectories, we built a multinomial logistic regression model explaining the relationship between classified vegetation type and topographic variables. We also determined the relative occurrence of species-dominance relay by comparing aged stands to known successional patterns. The model correctly predicted 78% of spruce distribution, and the majority of stands are not following the species-dominance relay pattern, implying that most of the study area appears to be following a self-replacement trajectory with only a small proportion of sites capable of supporting both deciduous and spruce species. These results have important implications for modeling forest succession in Interior Alaska because of the importance of these dynamics in determining the fire regime, carbon storage, and global warming scenarios.