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directly applicable to Massachusetts and provide a starting point for developing guidelines tailored to the regional ecology and forest types of the Commonwealth. 4.4 FORESTSUSTAINABILITYINDICATORS AND LANDSCAPE LEVEL EFFECTS OF BIOMASS HARVESTING 4.4.1 INTRODUCTION Beyond stand-level impacts, biomass harvesting has the potential to affect the provision of a broad suite of ecosystem services at larger regional or statewide scales. In this context, we are adopting the ecosystem services definitions used in the recent Forest Futures Visioning Process conducted by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR). These include ecological, socio-economic and cultural values provided by forests—essentially the term ecosystem services refers to all the public and private values provided by our forests. The sustainability of this broad suite of ecosystem services across the landscape is not primarily a scientific problem; instead it involves balancing a complex set of public values that go far beyond simply ensuring that biomass harvests leave a well-functioning ecosystem in place on harvested sites. Landscape ecological processes operate at varying spatial scales (e.g., across multiple stands, within a watershed, or an entire ecoregion). In the case of forests, the spatial arrangement and relative amounts of cover types and age classes become the ecological drivers on the landscape. The two most relevant ecological processes of interest in Massachusetts’ forests include facilitating or blocking movement of organisms and loss of “interior” habitat because of smaller patch sizes. Pure habitat loss is not necessarily a landscape ecological issue until it reaches a threshold where it influences the spatial pattern of habitats. At that time, which will vary by species, the spatial pattern can drive impacts beyond the effects of pure habitat loss. For most species (including plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates), we do not know where this threshold exists (Andren 1994, Fahrig 2003, Lindenmeyer & Fischer 2006). In the discus- sion below, effects at the “landscape scale” generally refer to loss of habitat at different scales (e.g., watershed, statewide) and we do not attempt to address ecological processes that are influenced by the spatial arrangement of habitats. The wood supply analysis in Chapter 3 suggests that absent very significant changes in energy prices, we do not expect dramatic increases over the next 15 years in harvest acreage across the state. But that analysis is really focused on overall supplies, and has not attempted to define more localized spatial impacts of these harvests. Moreover, although we do not foresee major changes in electricity pricing that would provide incentives for much heavier harvests, we cannot rule out such an occurrence in the event of a major energy price shock or a change in energy policies that significantly raises long-term prices. Consequently, for any specific bioenergy facility, we cannot rule out that forest impacts are potentially more dramatic within the “wood basket” of the facility than would occur on average across forests in the state. Such localized, wood basket effects could take the form of rapid reduction or change in the quality of forest cover if many land- owners respond to the demand from a new biomass facility by cutting more heavily on acres they would have harvested for timber anyway or by increasing the acreage they decide to harvest. From the ecosystem services perspective, such an increase in cutting could have a variety of effects. First, if enough landowners decide to conduct relatively heavy biomass harvests, we might see a reduction in older forest habitat and a shift to plant and animal species that prefer younger forests. Second, heavier or geographically concentrated cutting by private landowners could have broad aesthetic impacts that might be unacceptable to the public, potentially having negative impacts on other ecosystem services like forest-based recreation or tourism. Third, at a regional scale, increased harvest area or intensity may have long-term implications for the local timber and wood products economy if stands are harvested in a manner that results in a reduction in long-term supplies of high-quality timber. These various effects are discussed below in greater detail. 4.4.2 POTENTIAL ECOLOGICAL IMPACTS OF BIOMASS HARVESTS The ecological impacts from differing harvest scenarios can be considered at different scales. At the broadest scale—the forested land base of Massachusetts—a total harvest of 32,500 acres per year is approximately 1% of the total land base. This rate of harvest is unlikely to cause statewide ecological changes. The state’s forestland is on a trajectory to be comprised of older age classes, and harvests on 32,500 acres will not alter that trajectory significantly other than to provide the opportunity to make small shifts toward younger successional forests. The harvest intensi- ties predicted at the stand level are close to historical ranges, and the total volume of removal is far below growth rates. Other factors such as climate change, rapid land conversion, large-scale disturbance from insect, disease, or hurricanes could all play a cumulative role to cause landscape-wide ecological disturbance, but the harvest scenarios are not widespread enough to have this broad effect alone. However, landowner response to increased demand from bioen- ergy facilities could create more significant changes at smaller landscape scales. It is possible that several adjacent landowners or a significant number of landowners in a watershed or viewshed independent of each other could all respond to biomass markets with regeneration cuts over a short time period. Although this cannot be ruled out, the historical trends and landowner attitudes predict otherwise. Historically, rising prices at local sawmills do not appear to have stimulated widespread harvests of sawtimber for parcels nearby. Varying landowner attitudes and goals for their properties apparently work at even the smaller scale to mitigate a mass movement in any one direction of harvest or management, and we expect this to hold for biomass markets as well. The public’s major landscape ecological concern focuses on wildlife habitat and the potential risks to individual or groups of species. The fact is, the abundance of any given species will wax and wane BIOMASS SUSTAINABILITY AND CARBON POLICY STUDY MANOMET CENTER FOR CONSERVATION SCIENCES 71 NATURAL CAPITAL INITIATIVEPDF Image | NATURAL CAPITAL INITIATIVE AT MANOMET
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