Edge cases: fragmentation and ecosystem processes in temperate forest landscapes

Abstract

Temperate forests are the most fragmented forest biome, yet current understanding of fragmentation effects on ecosystem processes, such as carbon (C) cycling, is rooted in tropical forest research. We review the effects of persistent fragmentation on temperate forest ecosystem processes and quantify the extent to which the US national forest inventory and land‐cover maps represent forest edge area. We found systematic underrepresentation of forest edges across all methods. As compared with very high resolution (1 m) maps, conventional 30‐m resolution forest cover maps underestimated forest edge area by 16.4%, on average. Accounting for all forest edge area and edge effects on forest structure and growth resulted in a 14.8% median increase in aboveground forest C estimates, with 23.8% and 74.2% increases in agriculturally and urban dominated counties, respectively. We conclude by proposing improvements to forest inventories, maps, and models to better represent the fragmented temperate forest landscape.