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Modeling and mapping forest diversity in the boreal forest of interior Alaska

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Abstract

Context

Patterns of forest diversity are less well known in the boreal forest of interior Alaska than in most ecosystems of North America. Proactive forest planning requires spatially accurate information about forest diversity. Modeling is a cost-efficient way of predicting key forest diversity measures as a function of human and environmental factors.

Objectives

Investigate and predict the patterns and processes in tree species and tree size-class diversity within the boreal forest of Alaska for a first mapped quantitative baseline.

Methods

For the boreal forest of Alaska, USA, we employed Random Forest Analysis (machine learning) and the Boruta algorithm in R to predict tree species and tree size-class diversity for the entire region using a combination of forest inventory data and a suite of 30 predictors from public open-access data archives that included climatic, distance, and topographic variables. We developed prediction maps in a GIS for the current levels (Year 2012) of tree size-class and species diversity.

Results

The method employed here yielded good accuracy for the huge Alaskan landscape despite the exclusion of spectral reflectance data. It’s the first quantified GIS prediction baseline. The results indicate that the geographic pattern of tree species diversity differs from the pattern of tree size-class diversity across this forest type.

Conclusions

The results suggest that human factors combined with topographical factors had a large impact on predicting the patterns of diversity in the boreal forest of interior Alaska.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Thomas Malone and Dan Rees along with their field assistants for collecting and compiling all the forest inventory data. We would also like to thank Daniel Kashian, Steve Cumming and, one anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful comments which greatly improved the overall quality of this manuscript. Support for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation, through its Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT, NSF 0114423) to the Resilience and Adaptation Program (RAP) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks; Alaska EPSCoR NSF award #EPS-0701898; and the State of Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry.

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  1. Brian Young

    Present address: Department of Natural Sciences, Landmark College, Putney, VT, 05346, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, 99775-7200, USA

    Brian Young, John Yarie & David Verbyla

  2. EWHALE Lab, Institute of Arctic Biology, Biology & Wildlife Department, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, 99775-7000, USA

    Falk Huettmann & Keiko Herrick

  3. Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, 99775-7000, USA

    F. Stuart Chapin III

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  1. Brian Young
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  6. F. Stuart Chapin III
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Correspondence to Brian Young.

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Young, B., Yarie, J., Verbyla, D. et al. Modeling and mapping forest diversity in the boreal forest of interior Alaska. Landscape Ecol 32, 397–413 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-016-0450-2

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