The North American Forest Ecology Workshop (NAFEW) series was conceived by John Zasada and Terry Sharik in 1993 to fill a knowledge transfer void for forest ecologists. At the time, national meetings were largely focused on basic ecological science, such as the Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting, or on policy and technology transfer to practicing field foresters, such as the National Conventions of the Society of American Foresters (Sharik and Cook 1999). NAFEW filled that void by providing a platform specific to forest ecology, allowing scientists and managers across North America to discuss the latest basic and applied forest ecological research (Sharik and Cook 1999).
Since the first workshop in 1997 in Raleigh, North Carolina, NAFEW has traveled across North America (Figure 1), inviting not only forest ecologists, but silviculturists, fire ecologists, landscape ecologists, botanists, wildlife ecologists, and others to share their knowledge of issues in forest ecology ranging from regional to international in scale. The workshops are held biennially, generally starting the third Sunday in June, and often draw 200–400 participants, usually a mix of university scientists, graduate and undergraduate students, federal and state employees, employees of conservation organizations, and private-sector employees. Themes have varied for each meeting (Table 1), but there has been an underlying focus to understand the effects of human alterations of forest ecosystems across multiple scales.
Locations of the first 10 North American Forest Ecology Workshops.
Themes for the first 10 North American Forest Ecology Workshops.
The 9th NAFEW was no exception to this trend. Approximately 150 registrants convened at the Bloomington-Monroe County Convention Center in Bloomington, Indiana, from June 16–20, 2013. Keynote speakers Eric Gustafson, Daniel Dey, Robert Swihart, and Allen Pursell each discussed current and emerging challenges to forest and wildlife management in North America's eastern deciduous forest in light of changing climate, changing land use, and increasing fragmentation. More than 110 oral and 30 poster presenters discussed current research in 16 concurrent sessions on a variety of topics including aspen biogeography, biometry, dendroecology, carbon dynamics, applied fire ecology, invasive ecology, silviculture, and tropical forest ecology. Field trips during the conference included visits to long-term research sites of the Purdue University-led Hardwood Ecosystem Experiment,1 the Hoosier National Forest, a limestone barren community, a 400+-year-old central hardwood old-growth stand, and the Indiana University AmeriFlux/FLUXNET tower site.
The 11 articles included within this special section of Forest Science represent the broad array of topics and geographical regions discussed at the 9th NAFEW meeting. Included are two reviews that discuss management challenges to the eastern deciduous forest (Shifley et al. 2014) and, more specifically, to oak-dominated ecosystems in that region (Dey 2014). Guyette et al. (2014) and Potter and Koch (2014) represent two large-scale modeling studies that, respectively, estimate across the United States how changes in climate may influence fire behavior and how forest health is affected by phylogenic community structure. Regional studies are also presented. The impacts of forest ungulates, namely white-tailed deer, on ecological processes within Lake States forests are investigated by Tahtinen et al. (2014), and Shields et al. (2014) look at invasive species spread within central hardwood forests. Ruzicka et al. (2014) examine how thinning and gap-based harvest influence adjoining riparian areas in western Douglas-fir forests; conversion silviculture of southeastern slash pine (Pinus elliottii Engelm.) is investigated using the Forest Vegetation Simulator by Sharma et al. (2014). Two articles are examples of North America research outside the boundaries of the United States: Després et al. (2014) use dendrochronological techniques to investigate the old-growth structure of deciduous forests in Quebec, and Negreros-Castillo and Mize (2014) describe the growth and site affinity of mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla King) in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. Finally, the article by Sheffer et al. (2014) is an example of the increasing geographical breadth of NAFEW in recent meetings; they highlight changes in forest structure with invasion of pines in the forests of Israel. We thank all authors for these contributions to this issue.
We hope to see some of you at the 10th NAFEW meeting in Veracruz, Mexico, on June 14–18, 2015!
Endnote
For more information, see www.heeforeststudy.org/.
Acknowledgments: The 9th North American Forest Ecology Workshop could not have been held without the tireless effort of Elizabeth Jackson and Brian MacGowan, an Engagement Specialist and a Wildlife Extensive Specialist, respectively, within the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University. We also thank the other members of the Organizing Committee: Cliff Chapman (Central Indiana Land Trust), Songlin Fei (Purdue University), and Burnell Fischer (Indiana University). Generous support for the workshop was provided by the Northern Research Station of the USDA Forest Service, the Purdue Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, the Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center, the Indiana Society of American Foresters, the Society of American Foresters, The Nature Conservancy, the Lake States Fire Science Consortium, the Bloomington/Monroe Country Convention Center, Visit Bloomington, Regent Software, the Indiana University School of Public and Environmental Affairs, and the Indiana Research and Teaching Preserve. We thank the numerous volunteers that ensured a smooth running conference, most notably Justin Arseneault from Purdue University, and we thank Louise Murgia at the Society of American Foresters National Office for assisting in registrations and advertising. Last, we thank Dr. Keith Moser, Matthew Walls, and the Forest Science editorial staff for their support of this special issue.
Literature Cited
