Estimates of Down Woody Materials in Eastern US Forests

Abstract

Down woody materials (DWMs) are an important part of forest ecosystems for wildlife habitat, carbon storage, structural diversity, wildfire hazard, and other large-scale ecosystem processes. To better manage forests for DWMs, available and easily accessible data on DWM components are needed. We examined data on DWMs, collected in 2001 by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program on some plots in several states. We compiled DWM data from 778 plots to compute biomass for the following components: coarse woody material, fine woody material (three size classes), litter, duff, and shrub/herb cover. We developed regression equations to predict DWM components for extension to FIA’s more intensive plot network. Seven regression equations were applied to the FIA data to create maps of DWM biomass. As a first attempt to summarize FIA DWM measurements and extend them to plots without these data, our model produces reasonable results except possibly for duff and litter.