Watch the recorded webinar on YouTube here>
Due to the increasing prevalence of large high-severity wildfire patches with few surviving seed sources and poor natural regeneration, tree planting has become increasingly critical as a strategy to hasten forest recovery. It remains unclear, however, how environmental variation influences active tree planting success relative to passive natural regeneration.
Using natural variation, we investigated how the abiotic environment (e.g., temperature, precipitation, light intensity, etc.), dispersal limitation, and competition from shrubs impact tree planting success relative to natural regeneration and developed a spatial, web-based tool to predict where and when planting will have the greatest impact. Overall, we found that natural regeneration is lowest at the hottest, driest sites and that tree planting can provide a moderate boost to forest recovery in these areas. We also found that the timing of tree planting impacts success but depends on the intensity of competition from shrubs. In places where shrub competition is intense, tree planting is much more successful if planting occurs the year immediately following a fire. In contrast, in places where shrub competition is weak, delaying tree planting until some shrubs establish can facilitate tree seedling survival. This webinar will detail these drivers of reforestation outcomes and introduce the web-based tool for predicting planting success. Check out the new web tool for forest planning at https://reforestation.shinyapps.io/preset/
Presenters:
Quinn Sorenson is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Latimer lab in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis. Contact qmsorenson@ucdavis.edu or on twitter @qmsorenson
Derek Young is a Research Ecologist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis. Contact djyoung@ucdavis.edu.
Andrew Latimer is a Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis
Presentation Slides
View PDF of Powerpoint slides here >
View recorded webinar here >
Other resources and tools
Paper describing POSCRPT: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eap.1756
Steel et al.'s Climate-wise reforestation toolkit: https://climate-wise.shinyapps.io/reforest_toolkit/
