As we progress further into the 21st century, challenges facing natural resource management will be superimposed upon the resource demands of an increasing human population and a rapidly changing global climate. Unintended consequences of human activities such as atmospheric pollutants, nutrient deposition, and climate change all contribute to stresses and strains upon natural systems that lie well outside of our experience or present understanding. For example, the magnitude of present-day climate change far surpasses any known changes in the climate record of the last 800,000 years. Such climate changes may well produce forest systems unlike any that currently exist. Some consequences will be readily observable, such as fire and insect outbreaks, whereas others, such as species migration or changes in population genetic diversity, may take decades to occur. Even our largest scale experiments, such as the Aspen FACE experiment operated at our Harshaw Research Farm between 1997 and 2009, fall far short of representing long-term, landscape-scale responses of complex ecosystems. We have addressed these issues by defining research goals and studies to scale up our stand level results from climate change experiments to larger land areas and to analyze the impacts of climate change on tree population genetics.
Research Goals
Synthesize and scale up results from the Aspen FACE (Free Air Carbon Dioxide and Ozone Enrichment - FACTS-II) Experiment.
Determine rates of canopy CO2 exchange for northern forests.
Develop a better understanding of population genetic responses to climate change scenarios.
Selected Research
- Use results from Aspen FACE to constrain existing ecosystem productivity models.
- Develop new growth and competition models under elevated CO2 and O3 scenarios.
- Develop relationships between tree responses to CO2 and O3 and changes in climate patterns.
- Reduce genotypic uncertainties in scaling up Aspen FACE results.
- Use eddy covariance techniques to quantify canopy CO2 and H2O exchange rates, and apply modeling and upscaling methods across a range of forest types and ages.
- Determine plant-insect interactions in CO2- and O3-enriched atmospheres.
- Assess the potential for native plant populations to adapt to large and rapid changes in climate and atmospheric CO2.
- Scale plant genetic responses to elevated atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and O3 by describing changes in the genetic diversity of populations.
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