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Research Highlights: Interior Alaska boreal forest is still largely intact and forest harvest management, if applied appropriately across the forest landscape, can potentially mitigate the effects of climate warming, such as increasing wildfire and decreasing mature tree growth. Background and Objectives: This study examines historical relationships between forest growth and harvest in central boreal Alaska over the last 40 years in order to contribute to the development of sustainable forest harvesting practices. Materials and Methods: We compiled data from forest inventory and forest harvest and reforestation databases and analyzed harvesting intensity relative to growth. Results: Forest harvest management has relied heavily on natural regeneration due to a small profit margin. We found that volume harvested in the last 40 years was lower than volume growth; however, harvest activity was concentrated on the small road-accessible area and in the mature white spruce type. As a result, harvest activities need to be distributed geographically and by species in a way that prevents reduction of forest productivity or loss of ecosystem services. An expansion of the road network, or a shift in harvesting and utilization from white spruce to broadleaf would allow a significant increase in sustainable wood yield. Conclusions: There are two potential areas that could provide increased harvest, which contain a large amount of white spruce, birch, and aspen. Under rapid climate change, sustainable forest harvest management must consider the effects of fires, such as needs of salvage logging and a potential reduction of harvestable timber volumes due to damages. Forest harvest management could emulate natural fire disturbance and help reduce fuel amounts to prevent intensive and large-scale fires in the future in areas where fires are most aggressively suppressed.
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This content will become publicly available on April 22, 2026
Climate change threatens the sustainability of current timber harvesting practices across a latitudinal gradient in Siberia
functions and services for human societies. Temperatures are increasing most rapidly in high northern latitudes, altering tree growth and competition dynamics, and modifying disturbance regimes. The effect of these cumulative changes on the ecosystem functions provided by boreal forests is difficult to predict. We used the process-based LANDIS-II forest landscape model to evaluate how climate change and timber harvesting will interact to alter the production of ecosystem functions and services in boreal forests on three study areas across a large latitudinal gradient (11°) in central Siberia. We found that the relative importance of wood harvesting as a disturbance type varied depending on latitude and its impact was always far less than that of fire. Moderate climate change increased the availability of wood for harvest in the northern landscape, but wood availability declined in the southern landscapes under any amount of climate change likely because of an increase in the frequency of fire that kept forests too young for harvest. Modest climate change (RCP6.0) increased productivity and the storage of carbon in all landscapes but severe climate change (RCP8.5) reduced both in the southernmost landscape. Harvesting as a specific driver of change in these boreal forests is likely to be relatively minor except as a forest fragmentation process. Our results provide compelling evidence that status quo forest management in these landscapes is likely not sustainable, suggesting that climate-smart forestry will be needed.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2054713
- PAR ID:
- 10584921
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- European Journal of Forest Research
- ISSN:
- 1612-4669
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Boreal forests Climate change LANDIS-II Ecosystem functions Siberia
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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