Natural and anthropogenic disturbances influence ecological succession and impact the carbon
cycle. Understanding disturbance effects and ecosystem recovery is essential to carbon modeling. We
hypothesized that (1) species-specific disturbances impact the carbon cycle differently from nonspecific
disturbances. In particular, disturbances that target early-successional species will lead to higher carbon uptake by the post-recovery, middle- and late-successional community and (2) disturbances that affect the mid-successional deciduous species have more intense and long-lasting impacts on carbon uptake than disturbances of similar intensity that only affect the early-successional species. To test these hypotheses, we employed a series of simulations conducted with the Ecosystem Demography model version 2 to evaluate the sensitivity of a temperate mixed-deciduous forest to disturbance intensity and type. Our simulation scenarios included a control (undisturbed) case, a uniform disturbance case where we removed 30% of all trees regardless of their successional status, five cases where only early-successional deciduous trees were removed with increasing disturbance intensity (30%, 70%, 85%, and 100%), and four cases of mid-successional disturbances with increasing intensity (70%, 85%, and 100%). Our results indicate that disturbances affecting the mid-successional deciduous trees led to larger decreases in carbon uptake as well as longer recovery times when compared to disturbances that exclusively targeted the early-successional deciduous trees at comparable intensities. Moreover, disturbances affecting 30% to 100% of early-successional deciduous trees resulted in an increased carbon uptake, beginning 6 years after the disturbance and sustained through the end of the 100 year simulation.
