Project Description: The forest resources in national parks in the eastern United States play crucial roles in connecting visitors with park natural and cultural resources. In addition, many eastern parks contain forests that play a critical ecological role in the region, since NPS forests tend to be older and more diverse than the surrounding landscape and provide regionally under-represented habitats for countless organisms. Sustainable management of park forests is imperative to ensure long-term ecosystem health, maintain biodiversity, and meet the NPS mission of preserving park resources unimpaired for future generations. This project will use the best available science on the condition and trends of NPS forestlands in the Eastern U.S. to identify best management practices that parks can undertake in preserving their forest resources.
Eastern forests face a range of interacting stressors: novel pests and pathogens, invasive plant dominance, over-abundant white-tailed deer populations, development of surrounding non-NPS lands, altered disturbance regimes, increasingly frequent extreme weather events, and changing climate conditions. The impacts of these stressors on park forests range from poor regeneration in parks due to heavy deer browse and invasive species presence which over time will lead to a complete shift in forest composition and ecosystem function. Collectively, these threats and stressors can result in increased operational costs for parks to ensure visitor safety and preserve park infrastructure and have the potential to change the character of a park’s specific resource that visitors have come to enjoy.
Knowing the condition of and trend in NPS forest regeneration and how stressors affect it will allow parks to prioritize and allocate resources more effectively. We will use data collected by four NPS Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) networks, representing >30 NPS units, to develop a condition assessment of NPS forests in the Eastern U.S. The I&M networks represented in this effort include: Northeast Temperate (NETN), Mid-Atlantic (MIDN), National Capital Region (NCRN), and Eastern Rivers and Mountains (ERMN) networks. Vegetation plot data collected by these I&M networks in more than 1000 permanent plots over the span of more than a decade will be analyzed to provide the crucial information needed to develop condition-specific forest management recommendations to maintain healthy forests into the future across the eastern U.S.
Lead Principal Investigator: Nick Fisichelli, Schoodic Institute
Partner Institution: Schoodic Institute
Federal Agency: National Park Service
Federal Agency Technical Contact: Jim Comiskey
Project Type: Research
Project Discipline: Natural Resources
Project Sub-Discipline(s): Biological (Ecology, Fish, Wildlife, Vegetation, T&E)
Start Year: 2019
End Year: 2023
Initial Funding Amount: $106,158.70
Federal Grant Number: P19AC00880
Amendments
- Amendment Number: 01, Year: 2020, Amount: $104,866.19
Location: Eastern Forests in the United States
Products Associated with this Project:
- Crowe, K. 2023. Deer becoming a national park nemesis. Albany-Times Union. (Magazine/newspaper articles, interviews)
- Martinez, G. 2023. Deer, invasive plants are a grave threat to park forests in eastern U.S., study says. CBS News. (Magazine/newspaper articles, interviews)
- Miller, K. M., Perles, S. J., Schmit, J. P., Matthews, E. R., Weed, A. S., Comiskey, J. A., … & Fisichelli, N. A. 2023. Overabundant deer and invasive plants drive widespread regeneration debt in eastern United States national parks. Ecological Applications, e2837. (Journal Article)
- Liming, K. 2023. Reducing deer numbers and removing invasive plants are key to long-term forest health. National Parks Service. (Magazine/newspaper articles, interviews)
- Hargrave, A. 2023. Save a forest? Shoot a deer, NPS study finds. E&E News. (Internet Media (all types))
- Levulis, J. and K. Miller. 2023. Study finds most forests in eastern national parks at risk. WAMC Northeast Public Radio. (Magazine/newspaper articles, interviews)