Suburban forest dynamics: phenology, succession, and urbanization in a North Carolina Piedmont landscape.
Joseph O. Sexton Doctoral Research Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences Duke University |
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Status: IN PROGRESS (contents subject to change)
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Abstract:
Mitigation of global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is possible in north-temperate forests, but large measurement uncertainties currently prohibit directed land management. The uncertainties are associated with finely scaled, but ubiquitous, spatial-ecological processes and their integrated effects on carbon sequestration over large areas. Caused by landcover changes--but persisting long after the initial transition--these "edge effects" increase adjacent productivity by alleviating resource limitations of interior forests, to which current models are implicitly biased. To incorporate edge dynamics into modern carbon-accounting techniques, I am fuse spatio-temporal ecological models with remotely sensed landcover maps: first remotely sensing relevant parameters of forest cover and heterogeneity, then using the mapped estimates to test a phenological edge effect, and finally simulating forest dynamics in heterogeneous, urbanizing landscapes. This project will shrink uncertainty surrounding temperate-forest productivity and ultimately bring ecological models driven by remotely sensed data closer to scales at which land management decisions are made.
Publications:
Presentations:
Sexton, J.O. and D. L. Urban. 2006. Change vector analysis of forest succession: gradient effects on Piedmont forest dynamics (zip). 21st Annual Symposium of the United States Regional Chapter of the International Association for Landscape Ecology. San Diego, CA, March 28 - April 1, 2006.
Sexton, J.O. and D.L. Urban, 2005. NPP-edge effects in suburban landscapes: measuring “edge” (poster). 20th Annual Symposium of the United States Regional Chapter of the International Association for Landscape Ecology. Syracuse, NY, March 12-16, 2005.
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