Patterns of floodplain forest mortality and recruitment along the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers: Associations with forest fragmentation and flood inundation

Context

Different rates of floodplain forest recruitment and mortality can reveal important changes in ecosystem processes that drive forest dynamics, resulting in net changes in forest cover, thereby influencing a wide range of river habitat and morphological characteristics.

Objectives

We evaluated characteristics of forest change areas in the Upper Mississippi River System.

Methods

An overlay technique was used to map patches of forest loss, gain, and persistence between 2010 and 2020 in relation to a series of explanatory variables.

Results

We quantified a net decline in forest cover ranging from 3.2 to 16.8% in the uppermost five study reaches, and a net increase in forest cover ranging from 0.5 to 4.6% in the southernmost three reaches. Patches of forest loss and persistence were similarly tall (> 15 m), dense (> 90% cover), silver maple (Acer saccharinum) dominated forests, whereas forest gain patches were short (