|
B4WARMED stands for: Boreal Forest Warming at an Ecotone in  Danger.
The project is funded by the Department of Energy and will last four years. Principal Investigators are Peter Reich (PI), Rebecca Montgomery, Sarah Hobbie, Jacek Oleksyn and Roy Rich (co-investigators). The research seeks to help answer the question, "How will Minnesota tree species respond to a warming climate?"
The global climate system is being altered by anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, increasing temperatures worldwide, particularly at northern latitudes. The pace of global climate change, including warming, is expected to accelerate in the coming century, as atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to increase. In Minnesota, our climate has migrated 70 miles north in the past 50 years, and may migrate 125-250 miles further north in the next 50 years.
Northern Minnesota is a focal point of potential climate warming impacts because it sits at the transition – or ecotone- between the boreal and temperate forest zones. Most tree species in these forests (like aspen, spruce, and birch) are common in the boreal forests to our north in Canada or in the temperate maple-oak forests common to Wisconsin and places south and east. Increasing oak-maple dominance in our forest communities under a warmer future would represent a shift from our boreal heritage. However, both the northern and temperate tree species may perform poorly under warmer conditions. If so, neither our current forest trees nor their potential replacements may be well suited to our future climate. This experiment will enable us to assess the potential for climate change to alter future forest composition by experimentally warming forest plots (with infrared lamps and soil heating cables). We are documenting the effects on establishment, growth, and survival of seedlings of ten important tree species near their warmer (boreal species: Pinus banksiana, Picea glauca, Abies balsamea, Populus tremuloides, Betula papyrifera) or colder (temperate species: Pinus strobus, Quercus macrocarpa, Quercus rubra, Acer rubrum, Acer saccharum) range limits in northern Minnesota, in order to understand how germination, growth and survival at the establishment stage are influenced by direct and indirect climate effects.
|
