You are here
Harvard Forest Symposium Abstract 2016
- Title: Recovery Dynamics and Climate Change Effects to Future New England Forests
- Primary Author: Matthew Duveneck (New England Conservatory)
- Abstract:
Forests throughout eastern North America continue to recover from broad-scale intensive land use that peaked in the 19th C. These forests provide essential goods and services at local to global scales. It is uncertain how recovery dynamics, the processes by which forests respond to past forest land use, will continue to influence future forest conditions. Climate change compounds this uncertainty. We explored how continued forest recovery dynamics affect forest biomass and species composition and how climate change may alter this trajectory. Using a spatially explicit landscape simulation model (LANDIS-II) incorporating an ecophysiological model (PnET-II), we simulated forest processes in New England from 2010-2110. The model was calibrated using monthly net ecosystem exchange observed at three eddy-covariance flux towers and six long-term field sites, and validated by comparing aboveground biomass to regional forest inventory data. We compared forest biomass and composition from simulations that used a continuation of the current climate to those from four separate Global Circulation Models GCMs forced by a high emission scenario (RCP 8.5). Simulated forest change in New England was primarily driven by continued recovery dynamics; forests continued to accrue biomass and succeed to more shade tolerant species. Climate change produced additional increases in biomass and nominal shifts in community composition (Figure 1). These simulations suggest that recovery dynamics will have larger impacts than climate change on forest biomass and composition in New England. The large increases in biomass simulated under all scenarios will continue to influence ecosystem services associated with forest growth.
Figure 1. Spatial distribution of northern hardwoods (NH), spruce-fir (SF), and all other (AO) forest types at year 2010 and at year 2110 under current climate and the HADGE climate change scenario. Red, Green, Blue color combinations represent proportional distribution of each forest type within each pixel. Insets map locations are represented by black boxes. - Research Category: Ecological Informatics and Modelling
Physiological Ecology, Population Dynamics, and Species Interactions
