From Duke University and the “I was sure those tree rings were linear indicators” department, comes this news: Climate Change May Speed Up Forests’ Life Cycles
DURHAM, N.C. – Many climate studies have predicted that tree species will respond to global warming by migrating via seed dispersal to cooler climates. But a new study of 65 different species in 31 eastern states finds evidence of a different, unexpected response.
Nearly 80 percent of the species aren’t yet shifting their geographic distributions to higher latitudes. Instead, they’re staying in place – but speeding up their life cycles.
The Duke University-led study, published online Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Global Change Biology, is the first to show that a changing climate may have dual impacts on forests. It adds to a growing body of evidence, including a 2011 study by the same Duke team, that climate-driven migration is occurring much more slowly than predicted, and most plant species may not be able to migrate fast enough to stay one step ahead of rising temperatures.
“Our analysis reveals no consistent, large-scale northward migration is taking place. Instead, most trees are responding through faster turnover – meaning they are staying in place but speeding up their life cycles in response to longer growing seasons and higher temperatures,” said James S. Clark, H.L. Blomquist Professor of Environment at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.
Anticipating the impacts of this unexpected change on U.S. forests is an important issue for forest managers and for the nation as a whole, Clark said. It will have far-reaching consequences for biodiversity and carbon storage.
To test whether trees are migrating northward, having faster turnover, or both, the scientists went through decades of data on 65 dominant tree species in the 31 eastern states, compiled by the USDA Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis program. They used computer models to analyze the temperature and precipitation requirements of the trees at different life stages, and also considered factors like reproductive dependence of young and adult trees.
“The patterns we were able to see from this massive study are consistent with forests having faster turnover, where young trees tend to be more abundant than adult trees in warm, wet climates. This pattern is what we would expect to see if populations speed up their life cycle in warming climates,” said lead author Kai Zhu, a doctoral student of Clark’s at Duke. “This is a first sign of climate change impacts, before we see large-scale migrations. It gives a very different picture of how trees are responding to climate change.”
The fact that most trees are not yet showing signs of migration “should increase awareness that there is a significant lag time in how tree species are responding to the changing climate,” Zhu said.
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and Zhu was supported by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant.
Christopher W. Woodall, research forester at the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station in St. Paul, Minn., Souparno Ghosh, a postdoctoral researcher in Duke’s Department of Statistical Science, and Alan E. Gelfand, J.B. Duke Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences in Duke’s Department of Statistical Science, were co-authors of the study. Clark also holds an appointment as professor in the Department of Statistical Science.
Paper:
“Dual Impacts of Climate Change: Forest Migration and Turnover through Life History”
Kai Zhu, Christopher W. Woodall, Souparno Ghosh, Alan E. Gelfand, James S. Clark
Published Sept. 11, 2013, in Global Change Biology
DOI: 10.1111/gcb.12382
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12382/abstract
“Nearly 80 percent of the species aren’t yet shifting their geographic distributions to higher latitudes. Instead, they’re staying in place – but speeding up their life cycles.
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I follow them on the nearly 80% trees and their finding that the trees are not moving away from the unbearable heat like they’re supposed to.
Although, there’s not much information about the 20+% that are “shifting their geographic distributions to higher latitudes”.
Which tree species are they?
Are they “speeding up their life cycles” and still moving?
Oh noes, it must be worse than they thought, again, still, some more, whatever.
So, I wonder what’s going on with the movers.
Sadly, trees just will not cooperate.
I wonder if anybody on this research team can see it?
They just want to make like a tree and leave.
Oh the ironing.
cn
The best example I know for growing, no, thriving out of area is the Silver Birch which is a tundra tree growing fairly low more like a shrub than a tree but in the temperate UK it thrives to heights of 60ft or more.
Water is far more important than temperature for trees, indeed plants in general.
Chip Javert says: @ur momisugly September 12, 2013 at 6:58 am
How do these people get funding for “settled science” that (apparently) 97% of scientists already know?
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They have to keep grinding out more and more ‘pal-reviewed’ papers with scarier and scarier ‘Science’ to feed the MSM propaganda machine.
AndyG55 says:
September 12, 2013 at 1:23 am
Um.. maybe plants aren’t migrating, because the climate isn’t actually changing !
First prove the local climate is changing ! (references to GISS temps not relevant)
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the forest management folks and the USDA typically dont use GISS data. In some cases they will use proprietary data which you have to pay to get your hands on.
Psst. It is warming.
“This downhill shift is counter to what would be expected given 20th-century warming but is readily explained by species’ niche tracking of regional changes in climatic water balance rather than temperature. Similar downhill shifts can be expected to occur where future climate change scenarios project increases in water availability that outpace evaporative demand.”
That is one of the most outrageously ignorant statements I’ve ever encountered in an academic paper Have these people not the slightest idea about dryland ecology? Orographic rain? Have they never noticed that in the dry southwest the forest “islands in the sky” have treelines both at the top and the bottom? At the top it consists of cold-tolerant trees like spruce and aspen, at the bottom of drought-tolerant pinyons.
If it grows warmer the top treeline will rise, if it grows wetter the lower treeline will go down. If it grows warmer and wetter the forest will grow both at the top and bottom, if it grows colder and drier it will similarly shrink at both ends.
Reiterating what MJB said above, did the authors consider the impact of forestry or the American chestnut pandemic? American chestnuts used to make up as much as 25% of eastern hardwood forests but they were wiped out between 1905 and 1940. That plus any kind of intelligent forest management should eliminate the larger trees, leaving room for new trees–which the abstract suggests is what the authors found.
I don’t subscribe to wiley… has anybody read the actual study to determine whether they control for blight/forestry in their research?
“Tree rings make terrible thermometers” we already knew that.
Steven Mosher says, ” the forest management folks and the USDA typically dont use GISS data. In some cases they will use proprietary data which you have to pay to get your hands on.
Psst. It is warming.”
First of all, perhaps the forest management folks and the USDA typically don’t use GISS data because (A) GISS data is terrible and has been manipulated all to hell, and (B) GISS data doesn’t apply to any localized climates in any meaningful way, so it would make perfect sense not to use it.
Secondly, as far as Pss. It is warming…. since when? Hasn’t warmed significantly in the past 17 years, so… of course, from 1979 to 1997 it certainly was, but since then… not so much.
At Duke University, at the Nicholas School of the Environment, James S. Clark, has his own lab with its own web page, The Clark Lab. Clark’s bio lists him as a Professor of Statistics, no idea if he’s studied the Mannian Methods of Statistical Sophistry.
Apparently they’re upset that data is collected regionally and they want to know things individually (per tree, per forest?) to clearly see the readily-evident climate change signal, which the individual trees aren’t showing, which is leading them to create scalable forest models that will easily tell them what must be happening in the real world, which will be validated when the models clearly irrefutably prove the climate change signal is as bad as they thought it was, if not worse.
Or something like that.
“Climate change is rapidly transforming forests over much of the globe in ways that are not anticipated by current science. Large-scale forest diebacks, apparently linked to interactions involving drought, warm winters, and other species, are becoming alarmingly frequent.”
Gee, the largest “diebacks” I’m aware of is the destroying of old growth forests so they can replace them with plantations of biofuel crops, which is becoming alarmingly frequent.
Interesting page to read, if you like entire pages worded with thick jargon that sound like an extended funding proposal being sent to the grant review board of an eco-charity that’s so loaded with celebrities you could fail a drug test after shaking hands with only half of them. “Wow, says ‘climate’, lots of words bigger than ten letters, must be important.”
At the bottom, they worry about “Animal movement and demography.” See the pic of the cute seal, doomed to an early miserable death because meddling humans decided to mount an ugly tracking device to its skull, keeping it from feeling the expected smooth flow of water across its scalp when swimming. You can also tell how to a fellow colorblind animal it looks like a large splotchy growth, so it ain’t getting any seal nooky either. Savages.
mark wagner says:
There is no way to measure that small amount of temperature change. The life cycle of trees is so long that there is no meaningful way to measure any “migration” of the trees over such a short period.
Not true. It would be noticeable at the tree-line. There a seedling will only survive if there are several good (=unusuallyt warm) years in a row, so the run of warm years in the last couple of decades will mean that more seedlings than usual has survived, densing up the forest and probably extending it by a few hundred meters. Also many “trees” that have survived in a creeping form will “rear up” and become real trees. On the other hand a few bad years (like the last fcouple of winters) can wipe out much of this new growth. Both effects are noticeable in northern Scandinavia.
Steven Mosher says: @ur momisugly September 12, 2013 at 8:03 am
….Psst. It is warming.
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In comparison to WHAT, the little Ice Age, the Wisconsin Glaciation, the 1960s and 1970’s?
No one here denies that it has warmed and few deny that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, however after suffering from frost bite on a few occasions during the 1960s and 1970s I much prefer it warmer. A lot warmer which is why when given the chance I left New England and headed for the sunny south.
And I find it quite interesting that researchers are privy to data sets the general public is not allowed to see despite the fact tax payers PAID FOR THE DATA and it continues TO THIS DAY!.
so in other words, “increased CO2 makes trees grow faster”
where’s my grant money?!
Manuel Graça says:September 12, 2013 at 1:52 am
“Off topic: Durão Barroso, President of the European Commission, talking about the 99% scientific “consensus”. A must.”
Seconded!!
It’s frustrating that they threw all this effort into the study and then muddied it up with the assumption that trees must migrate to survive and that they will migrate in the future. Both of those are clearly not supported by the evidence. What they can say is that at this point in time, no northward or upward migration is apparent.
That’s like grilling a nice, sirloin steak and then slathering it with ketchup.
Condider Pinus radiata, Monterey pine, which is the main commercial timber tree grown in New Zealand.
New Zealand is warm and wet, and must be experiencing the same CO2 level as the rest of the world.
They get phenomenal growth rates, with tree rings up to 2 or 3 inches per year in the North Island, and a turn-round time of 28 to 30 years for a crop.
Thus they are already experiencing ‘global warming’, and seeing the effect on tree growth.
Much of their commercial forestry is a monoculture, so no wonder they are paranoid anout keeping tree diseases out of their country.
Steven Mosher says:
September 12, 2013 at 8:03 am
Psst. It is warming.
________________________
Psst… prove it. Sometimes, we think better of you, Steven and then you say something like that.
Gary Pearse says: September 12, 2013 at 5:54 am This is unbelievable dreck.
“… establish a chair in logic in science to give a guiding hand to these PhD candidates and their scientifically illiterate professors /
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/ (at Duke, I nominate rgb@duke for the job).”
Wm. Briggs is my suggestion, but how to tear him away from the Big Apple.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022977. This report shows the same garbage is being used to dictate reforestation policy in Alberta, Canada. Scientist want to move seed adapted from their place of origin to new areas outside the adapted range based on anticipation of climate change. I see huge reforestation failures in the not to distant future based on this psuedo-science. Every forester in Alberta better be concerned and voice disapproval regarding this policy.
Taxed to death says: @ur momisugly September 12, 2013 at 10:08 am
…. This report shows the same garbage is being used to dictate reforestation policy in Alberta… I see huge reforestation failures in the not to distant future based on this psuedo-science. Every forester in Alberta better be concerned and voice disapproval regarding this policy.
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Looks like a full time employment/tax payer waste of money so do not expect much help from those who know which side their pay check comes from.
The commercial types on the other hand, that are not getting a government handout, will plant logically and hope to reap the benefits of the failures caused by those who follow the latest ‘Fashion’
Ain’t Politics grand?
“climate-driven migration is occurring much more slowly than predicted”
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Global warming is also occurring much more slowly than predicted, so what’s the problem?
StephenP says:
September 12, 2013 at 9:18 am
Tree growth has increased around the world not because of “warming” but from the beneficial effect of higher CO2 levels.
Steven Mosher says:
September 12, 2013 at 8:03 am
It is not warming compared to the late ’90s. It is warmer than in the late ’60s & early ’70s. It is not warming compared to the 1930s. It is warming compared to the Little Ice Age. It is not warming compared to the Medieval Warm Period. It is warming compared to the Dark Ages Cold Period. It is not warming compared to the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan Warm Period or the Holocene Climatic Optimum. It is warmer than the Wisconsin Glaciation, but it is especially not warming compared to the Eemian Interglacial.
To the extent that it is warming, it’s natural. Humans have far less power than you imagine.
tty says: “There a seedling will only survive if there are several good (=unusuallyt warm) years in a row”
Mark replies: we’re talking max a few tenths of one degree here. I seriously doubt that small temperature difference makes a difference to the seedlings.
Al Gore would fit well with this role as emperor:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1612#comic
oldgamer56 says:
September 12, 2013 at 6:27 am
I’ve seen “Heavy plant crossing”.
So, yet another failed prediction?