The national climate assessment summarizes the impacts of climate change on the united states. How do disturbances and environmental heterogeneity affect the pace of forest distribution shifts under climate change. Forest disturbances in a changing climate july 28, 2017 by jennifer hushaw disturbance shapes the character and composition of ecosystems and it is a pervasive feature of. While accelerated forest restoration on its own is unlikely to be a sufficient long. Management could hinder or reinforce the transition of forest composition in accordance with various objectives in the face of climate change 10,11. This analysis points to specific research needs that should improve the understanding of how climate change affects forest disturbances. Pdf forest disturbances under climate change researchgate. Climate change vulnerability assessment of forests and. Important processes through which climate influences forest disturbances. The samplebased design of these inventories may offer little in the way of detailed and spatiallyexplicit information on the distribution of forest biomass, timing and location of timber harvesting in managed forests, or the cause and timing of other types of forest disturbances.
Climate change affects forests both directly and indirectly through disturbances. Altogether, this means that more variation of the changes in forest productivity under climate change and disturbances than expressed by our results is to be. An increase in disturbance occurrence and severity has been documented over large parts of the globe, for example, for fire10,11, insect outbreaks12, and drought14,15. The recovery of north american forests is likely to impact their capacity as a carbon sink. Forest disturbances under climate change nature climate. Forests in the carpathian mountains store high amounts of carbon and provide livelihoods to local people. Negative impacts of climate change on forests threaten the delivery of crucial wood and nonwood goods and environmental services on which an estimated 1. We also consider options for coping with disturbance under changing climate. Assessment of the vulnerability of forests and forestdependent people to climate change is a necessary. Consequently, disturbance change is expected to be among the most profound impacts that climate change will have on forest ecosystems in the. We investigated how temperate forest landscapes may recover their carbon c after severe wind and bark beetle disturbance, while being exposed to climate change. This article examines how eight disturbances influence forest structure, composition, and function, and how climate change may influence the severity, frequency, and magnitude of disturbances to forests.
Proactive managements, such as the resistant and the adaptive treatments, have been proposed to mediate the effects of future climates 10,12. Are forest disturbances amplifying or canceling out. A disturbance can also occur over a long period of time and can impact the biodiversity within an ecosystem. Forest disturbances have become more common during the past century, and climate change is expected to lead to increased occurrences in europe seidl et al. Forest ecosystem disturbances national climate assessment. Forest disturbances under climate change air unimi. Forest ecosystems identified as being particularly vulnerable to the impacts of. However, it remains challenging to project exactly how humans will respond to climate change in terms of forest management. However, climate change will likely also intensify forest disturbances. The interplay between climate change, forests, and. The himalayan region is not only threatened by rapid changes in anthropogenic activities but also by global climate change. Maintaining these properties under the influence of climate change requires continuous and even increasing efforts of forest. The forest service is the only federal agency that maintains a strong research focus on forest pests. How do disturbances and environmental heterogeneity affect.
Disturbances are a natural and integral part of forest ecosystems, and climate change can alter these natural interactions. Tree mortality under the concurrent disturbance regime scenario was less than the sum of all single disturbance regimes, providing evidence of signi. Interactions between individual disturbance agents are a major component of disturbance regimes, yet how interactions contribute to their climate sensitivity remains largely unknown. Given the uncertainties of magnitude and characteristics of climate change, prior knowledge of longterm changing distribution pattern of forests is. Increasing forest disturbances in europe and their impact. However, our understanding of disturbance dynamics in response to climatic changes remains incomplete, particularly regarding largescale patterns, interaction effects and dampening feedbacks. Limits to growth of forest biomass carbon sink under. Impacts of disturbances and thus of climate change are seen over a board spectrum of spatial and temporal scales.
The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of forest productivity changes in different forests in europe under climate. In ecology, a disturbance is a temporary change in environmental conditions that causes a pronounced change in an ecosystem. Disturbances lead to the reversal of an otherwise positive climate change effect on the forest c balance. Climate change and forest disturbances publications srs. Warmer and drier conditions particularly facilitate fire, drought and insect disturbances, while warmer and wetter conditions increase disturbances from wind and pathogens.
More than one third of the synthesized investigations on disturbance change focused on coniferous forests 39. When disturbances exceed their natural range of variation, the change in forest structure and function may be extreme. Resilience, the ability to recover from disturbance, has risen to the forefront of scientific policy, but is difficult to quantify, particularly in large, forested landscapes subject to disturbances, management, and climate change. Pdf forest disturbances under climate change scinapse. Researchers synthesized results from over 670 studies published from 1990 to the present that assessed how forest disturbance changed in response to a change in climate, focusing on six disturbance agents fire, drought, wind, snow and ice, insects, and pathogens. Attribution of net carbon change by disturbance type. Are forest disturbances amplifying or canceling out climate change. The consensus among most scientists is that the global climate is changing in response to a rapid increase in greenhouse gas emissions over the past 150 years. Impacts of disturbances and thus of climate change are seen over a board spectrum of. The resistant treatment reduces the occurrence of management to maintain existing forest composition. Climate change, in particular, is expected to impact on forest biodiversity and the ability of forests to provide soil and water protection, habitat for species and other ecosystem services.
Computational ecology and environmental sciences group, microsoft research, 21 station road, cambridge, cb1 2fb, uk. Yet modeling studies indicate the importance of climate effects on disturbance regimes he. Spatial resilience of forested landscapes under climate. Previous studies have projected that restoration under climate change will result in long. Here we provide a global synthesis of climate change effects on important abiotic fire, drought, wind.
Climate change adaption and mitigation management optionsa guide for natural resource managers in southern forest ecosystems crc press taylor and francis. However, our understanding of disturbance dynamics in response to climatic changes. This allowed them to assess the degree of climate sensitivity. Forest disturbances under climate change rupert seidl1, dominik thom1. Forestry intergovernmental panel on climate change. Our objective was to determine which spatial drivers will control landscape resilience over the next century, given a range of plausible climate projections across. Within the united states, natural disturbances having the greatest ef fects on forests include fire, drought, introduced species, in sect and pathogen outbreaks. This article examines how eight disturbances influence forest structure, composition, and function and how climate change may influence the severity, frequency, and magnitude of disturbances to forests.
Climate change guidelines for forest managers fao forestry paper 172 the effects of climate change and climate variability on forest ecosystems are evident around the world and further impacts are unavoidable, at least in the short to medium term. Climate smart land network forest disturbances in a. Forests climate change, biodiversity and land degradation. Evidence for declining forest resilience to wildfires. Forest carbon solutions for mitigating climate change. Responses of korean pine to proactive managements under. Climate change will alter known environmental and economic risks and add new risks to be addressed in the management of forests in urban areas, the. They determined whether climate change had a predominantly amplifying or dampening effect on disturbance, as well as the relative size of that effect. Climate change and forest disturbances usda forest service. Studies of the effects of climate change on forests have focused on the ability of species to tolerate temperature and moisture changes and to disperse, but they have ignored the effects of disturbances caused by climate change e. Project imaestro is supported under the umbrella of eranet cofund forestvalue. Forest disturbances under climate change request pdf.
This paper is one in a series developed by the forest sector of the us national assessment of the potential consequences of climate variability and change. Moreover, the forest case studies are themselves very different in terms of forest management, species choice etc which are all factors that determine the influence of climate change. Disturbances from all other agents increased under future climate change, with median effect sizes of. Forestry mitigation activities can be designed to be compatible with adapting to climate change, maintaining biodiversity, and promoting sustainable development. Disturbance and landscape dynamics in a changing world. Here we provide a global synthesis of climate change effects. Disturbance regimes have changed profoundly in many forest ecosystems in recent years, with climate being a prominent driver of disturbance change9. Specifically, we synthesize the existing knowledge of how98 climate change may affect. A majority of the information extracted from the literature 83. A conceptual framework for adaptive forest management under climate change 47 forest management can be used to modify the delivery of ecosystem services by adding or subtracting biophysical inputs. Some disturbances have tight interactions with the species and forest communities which can be disrupted by climate change. Finally, we found th at climate change was the most critical driver of area.
The capability of forest ecosystems to sequester carbon from the atmosphere largely depends on the interaction of soil organic matter and nitrogen, and thus, this process will be greatly influenced by nitrogen deposition under the future scenario of global change. Disturbances catalyze the adaptation of forest ecosystems. Here we provide a global synthesis of climate change effects on important abiotic fire, drought, wind, snow and ice and biotic insects and pathogens disturbance agents. The effects of each disturbance are partly tempered by prior adaptations. Therefore, we selected a representative area of 40 km2 to investigate the effects of changing climate and disturbance. Addressing the challenges posed by climate change will require adjustments to forest. We focus on examples from the united states, although these influences occur worldwide. Disturbances alter composition, structure, and functioning of forest ecosystems, and their legacies persist for decades to centuries. Disturbances often act quickly and with great effect, to alter the physical structure or arrangement of biotic and abiotic elements. Context growing evidence suggests that climate change could substantially alter forest disturbances. Innovative forest management strategies for a resilient. Postdisturbance recovery of forest carbon in a temperate. Climate change will alter forest ecosystems and their provisioning of services.
Vulnerability of forests in the himalayan region to. Climate may affect forest composition and structure via its in. If the provision of ecosystem services is not consistent with the goals. However, our understanding of disturbance dynamics in response to climatic changes remains. Innovative forest management strategies for a resilient bioeconomy under climate change and disturbances. The national climate assessment summarizes the impacts of climate change on the united states, now and in the future. In particular, they examined whether disturbance was likely to increase or decrease under either 1 warmer and wetter or 2 warmer and drier conditions. A toolkit for state governments created by the forest climate working group how states can promote forest carbon services in the context of current policy environment the fcwg believes there is an opportunity. Managing increasing forest disturbance risks forest europe. The amount of information available on the effects of climate change on forest disturbances varied strongly with disturbance agent and biome table s1.
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