the u.s. department of agriculture (usda)-natural resources conservation service (nrcs) uses an ecological site description (esd) framework to help incorporate interactions between local soil, climate, flora, fauna, and humans into schema for land management decision-making. we demonstrate esd and digital soil mapping tools to (i) estimate potential o horizon carbon (c) stock accumulation from restoring alternative ecological states in high-elevation forests of the central appalachian Mountains in west Virginia (wV), usa, and (ii) map areas in alternative ecological states that can be targeted for restoration. this region was extensively disturbed by clear-cut harvests and related fires during the 1880s through 1930s. we combined spodic soil property maps, recently linked to historic red spruce–eastern hemlock (Picea rubens–Tsuga canadensis) forest communities, with current forest inventories to provide guidance for restoration to a historic reference state. this allowed mapping of alternative hardwood states within areas of the spodic shale uplands conifer forest (scF) ecological site, which is mapped along the regional conifer-hardwood transition of the central appalachian Mountains. Plots examined in these areas suggest that many of the spruce-hemlock dominated stands in wV converted to a hardwood state by historic disturbance have lost at least 10 cm of o horizon thickness, and possibly much more. Based on this 10 cm estimate, we calculate that at least 3.74 to 6.62 tg of c were lost from areas above 880 m elevation in wV due to historic disturbance of o horizons, and that much of these stocks and related ecosystem functions could potentially be restored within 100 yr under focused management, but more practical scenarios would likely require closer to 200 yr.
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Development of strategic conservation of imperiled species faces several large challenges, including uncertainty in species response to management actions, budgetary constraints that limit options, and issues with scaling expected conservation benefits from local to landscape levels and from single to multiple species. We used a structured decision making process and a multi-scale approach to identify a cost-effective conservation strategy for the imperiled aquatic species in the Upper Tennessee River Basin (UTRB), which face a variety of threats. The UTRB, which encompasses a landscape of 22,360 square miles primarily in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, harbors one of the most globally diverse assemblages of freshwater fishes and mussels occurring at temperate latitudes. In developing the strategy, we sought to identify which management actions to emphasize to best achieve recovery of imperiled aquatic species, given costs and uncertainty in management effectiveness. The strategy was developed for conservation implementation over a 20-year period, with periodic review and revision. In this presentation, we describe the ecological significance of the UTRB, the planning process, and the resulting strategy. A strategic emphasis on population management emerged as the optimal approach for achieving conservation of imperiled aquatic species in the UTRB, which aligns well with the goals of existing plans for conserving and recovering imperiled fishes and mussels in the UTRB. The structured planning process and resulting conservation strategy dovetail with the landscape approach to conservation embodied in the USFWS’s strategic habitat conservation approach and network of Landscape Conservation Cooperatives.
The recorded webinar is also available for viewing at the following link: http://www.fws.gov/northeast/science/seminars/July2015.html.
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