US forests face an unclear future with climatechange NatureGeosci
For this study, the researchers were interested in forecasting changes in the amount of aboveground carbon storage in forests of different regions in the United States. Aboveground carbon refers to any living parts of a tree that are above ground, including wood and leaves or needles.
Anderegg and colleagues, including first author and postdoctoral scholar Chao Wu, chose all of the above."By bringing in many different approaches and different model types and comparing them," Anderegg said,"we can get a sense of what the different models are telling us and how can we learn to improve the models. And we might have much more confidence if all of the models and all of the approaches tell us the same story in a given region.
But the models also showed significant risks of losing carbon from forests through the climate triple threat of fire, climate stress and insect damage. With those risks, the models projected a net carbon gain in forests nationwide of between 3 and 5 petagrams of carbon by the end of the 21st century . Without those climate stresses, forests might be able to pack away a net 9.4 petagrams of carbon.
"For carbon offsets to be effective," Anderegg said,"they have to store carbon for a pretty long amount of time—multiple decades to centuries. So if fire's burning them down or insects are wiping out different areas, it could vastly undermine their effectiveness as climate change solutions."
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