Sergei A. Wilde Distinguished Lectureship On Forest Soils.

Demands for goods and services provided by forest ecosystems are increasing.  In addition to traditional needs for production of wood products , society now looks to forests for provision of water, protection of water and air quality, carbon storage, wildlife habitat and aesthetics.  Classification and analysis of ecosystem services provides a basis for comprehensive assessment of the demands on  forests and a platform for evaluating tradeoffs and conflicts between different needs.  Many of these services are controlled by soil processes and this is thus an exciting time in Forest Soil Science, with opportunities to bring results from both traditional and novel areas of research to bear on important societal problems in a powerful new context.   In this talk, I will described how an ecosystem services approach has been applied in two specific research programs in northern hardwood forests; winter climate change effects on snow depth, soil freezing and nutrient loss , and analysis of the effects of invasive earthworms on carbon and nitrogen dynamics.  Reduction in snow cover has a negative effect on ecosystem services related to wood production and water and air quality, i.e. snow is good; while earthworm invasion reduces ecosystem services related to carbon storage, i.e. worms are bad. While the ecosystem services approach provides useful context for specific forest soil research projects, there is a strong need to develop approaches to determining and predicting which environmental changes are likely to be most important in particular ecosystems at specific times.   These approaches will help us to develop research programs that address critical basic science issues in forest soils while at the same time providing information needed to solving pressing societal problems.