Introduction | Biodiversity | Tree Health | Carbon Credits | Forest Fires | Watershed
Adaptive
Forest Management Practices with Watershed Issues and Climate Change
The forests in the Cedar River watershed area provide the city of Seattle with valuable ecological services. The Department of Natural Resources guides public and private managers of this area with its policies. Public managers of these forests are often caught between conflicting socioeconomic pressures to harvest timber for funding new school construction or preserving the health and quantity of trees in the stands to protect the quality of municipal water supplies.
Natural forest disturbances as a result of climate variability and change add another layer of complexity to the concerns of these managers, for if there is an increase in high precipitation events, landslides and floods may threaten water quality. As the population in the state grows, the health of the ecosystem in this watershed area will continue to be impacted by human development projects on lands outside of the Mountains to Sound greenway conservation program.
Some scientific studies cite an increase in forest growth in the Northwest, and others stress the possibility of drought induced-dieback from the stress of summertime warming. If snowpack levels decline over the coming decades and runoff increases in the winter, managers will have to adjust the timing of releasing water differently to anticipate flooding events and save water for increased demand in the summer to maintain streamflow.
References
Hansen et al., "Global Change in Forests: Responses of Species, Communities,
and Biomes", BioScience, September 2001, Vol. 51, No 9, 765-779.