Abstract
The quantity and condition of downed dead wood (DDW) is emerging as a major factor governing forest ecosystem processes such as carbon cycling, fire behavior, and tree regeneration. Despite this, systematic inventories of DDW are sparse if not absent across major forest biomes. The Forest Inventory and Analysis program of the United States (US) Forest Service has conducted an annual DDW inventory on all coterminous US forest land since 2002 (~1 plot per 38,850 ha), with a sample intensification occurring since 2012 (~1 plot per 19,425 ha). The data are organized according to DDW components and by sampling information which can all be linked to a multitude of auxiliary information in the national database. As the sampling of DDW is conducted using field efficient line-intersect approaches, several assumptions are adopted during population estimation that serve to identify critical knowledge gaps. The plot- and population-level DDW datasets and estimates provide the first insights into an understudied but critical ecosystem component of temperate forests of North America with global application.
Highlights
Background & SummaryDowned dead wood (DDW) can be defined as detrital components of forest ecosystems, including fallen twigs and small branches and fallen tree stems and large branches
Population estimators are constructed based on the length of transect, diameter of the DDW piece, and the attributes of interest measured from each sampled piece
There are numerous fields in this table, the counts of Fine woody debris (FWD) By size are the most important. This table contains substantial measurement information from pre-2012 sample protocols, the transect sampling of piles are additional fields in this table. This information is only used when calculating DDW attributes at the condition, plot, and population level as it identified which parts of transects on subplots/plots were sampled
Summary
Downed dead wood (DDW) can be defined as detrital components of forest ecosystems, including fallen twigs and small branches (fine woody debris) and fallen tree stems and large branches (coarse woody debris). FIA’s inventory serves as perhaps the largest publicly available DDW dataset across a continental scale, with plots in nearly every US state, and with cumulative sample transects spanning a distance nearly equivalent to the distance across the coterminous United States (Fig. 1). Describing these data, as well as the continuous monitoring program and recent modifications, is paramount to forest C science[25], and to emerging bioenergy efforts[26,27,28]
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