UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
Planting a tree seems like a generally good thing to do for the environment. Trees, after all, take in carbon dioxide, offsetting some of the emissions that contribute to climate change.
But all of that carbon in trees and forests worldwide could be thrown back into the atmosphere again if the trees burn up in a forest fire. Trees also stop scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air if they die due to drought or insect damage.
The likelihood of those threats impacting forests is increasing nationwide, according to new research in Ecology Letters, making relying on forests to soak up carbon emissions a much riskier prospect.
“U.S. forests could look dramatically different by the end of the century,” says William Anderegg, study lead author and associate professor in the University of Utah School of Biological Sciences. “More severe and frequent fires and disturbances have huge impacts on our landscapes. We are likely to lose forests from some areas in the Western U.S. due to these disturbances, but much of this depends on how quickly we tackle climate change.”
Wildfire, drought and insects
The researchers modeled the risk of tree death from fire, climate stress (heat and/or drought) and insect damage for forests throughout the United States, projecting how those risks might increase over the course of the 21st century.
See their findings in an interactive map here.
By 2099, the models found, that United States forest fire risks may increase by between four and 14 times, depending on different carbon emissions scenarios. The risks of climate stress-related tree death and insect mortality may roughly double over the same time.
But in those same models, human actions to tackle climate change mattered enormously—reducing the severity of climate change dramatically reduced the fire, drought and insect-driven forest die-off.
“Climate change is going to supercharge these three big disturbances in the U.S.,” Anderegg says. “We’ve seen devastating fire seasons with increasing severity in the past several years. Generally, we expect the western U.S. to be hit hardest by all three of these. And they’re somewhat interconnected too. Really hot and dry years, driven by climate change, tend to drive lots of fires, climate-driven tree mortality and insect outbreaks. But we have an opportunity here too. Addressing climate change quickly can help keep our forests and landscapes healthy.”
The study is published in Ecology Letters and was supported by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, David and Lucille Packard Foundation and Microsoft’s AI for Earth.
After publication, find the full study here.
JOURNAL
Ecology Letters
DOI
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Computational simulation/modeling
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Not applicable
ARTICLE TITLE
Future climate risks from stress, insects and fire across US forests
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
12-May-2022
Where can I get a grant full of $$$ so I can write intuitively obvious … Stuff… ??? I can crank out … Stuff… Like this every week for the next few months… And I can tour the bars and hot spots… Ummm I mean study venues all around the world…
More modeled fantasy.
Perhaps, that tree damaged hillock is one of their study subjects?
Looks like water tolerant trees were planted on an arid hill.
Unsurprisingly, they fail to survive one of the frequent dry spells.
Happens frequently, especially plants originally spread by people.
Forest fires are natural, many plants need fire to reproduce, they are called pyrophytes, and in hot, dry places, it is normal for the forest to burn to the ground every 30-40 years or so.
Only man limits these fires, if it was up to nature, the entire state would burn.
William Anderegg of the 97% come on down.
A lot of the carbon get stored in the roots. They don’t get burned away. So some of the sink capacity remains … but since CO2 isn’t a real problem anyway, forget the whole paper.
” Climate Change Increases Risks of Tree Death “, but also increase the performance of other trees.
Time to defund these pseudo-scientists.
Stupid beyond belief!
”Climate change” in their minds is dangerous warming caused by man-made CO2
Bull feathers
All that extra CO2 is greening the Earth significantly. And warmer means longer growing season especially at higher altitudes
Annual burn acreage was >10X greater in the early 1900s
“The planet is doing fine – – it’s the people that are fu**ed up!” – George Carlin
Logic tells me a warming climate would encourage trees to grow in higher altitudes and in longer in latitudes. So more forests, not less. Hence this article is illogical.