Climate Change Leads to Relative Decrease in Coarse Woody Debris Volume in West Coast US Forests

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: The impact of climate change on dead wood volumes in US forests remains uncertain. Coarse woody debris, or pieces of dead wood at least 3 inches in diameter, play an especially important role in habitat quality, wildfire risk, and carbon storage. This study leverages machine learning techniques and data from the US Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis Program to predict coarse woody debris volumes in California, Oregon, and Washington under different climate change scenarios. Our results suggest that though coarse woody debris volumes are predicted to increase due to increasing stand age, climate change has a relatively negative impact on CWD volume. We posit that this could be driven by increased decomposition. This study represents the first machine learning approach to predicting the volume of coarse woody debris under climate change and adds to a small but growing body of evidence that climate change will have a negative impact on CWD volume.

Type of resource	text
Publication date	June 14, 2023

Author	Cambron, Trevor
Thesis advisor	Field, Chris

Subject	climate change
Subject	forests
Subject	Coarse woody debris
Subject	Machine learning
Subject	model
Subject	Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (U.S.)
Genre	Text
Genre	Article
Genre	Thesis

DOI	https://doi.org/10.25740/yd382bq0601
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/yd382bq0601

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred citation: Cambron, T. and Field, C. (2023). Climate Change Leads to Relative Decrease in Coarse Woody Debris Volume in West Coast US Forests. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/yd382bq0601. https://doi.org/10.25740/yd382bq0601.

Undergraduate Honors Theses, Doerr School of Sustainability

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