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Downed dead wood has been documented to provide a variety of benefits in forest ecosystems such as increasing forest structure, habitat for various flora and fauna, substrate for tree regeneration, and store of carbon.What has been poorly understood is the mechanisms by which dead wood alters various moisture and temperature regimes within forest ecosystems, namely across the forest floor and soil continuum.As a means to better understand the role of dead wood in various forest processes (tree regeneration or wildfire risk), we developed and applied a sensor network to a sugar maple log in a northern hardwood forest during a growing season to monitor log and soil temperature and moisture during 15-minute intervals.Initial results suggest that the temperature and moisture of dead wood is highly dynamic while interacting with the forest floor and soil so as to mitigate the periodicity of precipitation.Building off this first study, streamlined sensor networks are being deployed on numerous logs across an operational-scale adaptive silvicultural experiment in northern NH for the assessment of log and soil moisture dynamics in the context of forest management and wildfire risk.

Media Record Details

Jul 1, 2019
Christopher W. Woodall

Cataloging Information

Topic(s):
Fuels
Fuel Descriptions
Fuels Inventory & Monitoring

NRFSN number: 19705
Record updated: