A sign hanging above the door of a giant open-top glass chamber in a remote part of Minnesota’s Marcell Experimental Forest explains why so many scientists from around the world have worked hard to get a piece of this boreal woodland.
A sign hanging above the door of a giant open-top glass chamber in a remote part of Minnesota’s Marcell Experimental Forest explains why so many scientists from around the world have worked hard to get a piece of this boreal woodland. “Welcome to the Future” the sign reads, and that is literally what researchers get when they come to do research at Marcell.
The experiment — a collaboration between the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory — features 10 open-top glass chambers. Each is 30 feet high, 40 feet in diameter, and designed — by controlling temperature and CO2 levels — to mimic what will happen to boreal peatlands under various global warming scenarios. They range from no change to a very realistic increase of 4 degrees F, to 7 degrees F, and even to a frightening 12 degrees F and higher.
The Marcell Experimental Forest was established in 1962 to investigate the ecology and hydrology of the boreal forest, which in North America extends from the Lake Superior area of the northern United States to northern Canada and Alaska. Boreal woodlands — the world’s largest forest system, holding vast carbon-rich peatlands — also cover Scandinavia and much of Russia.
Read more at Yale Environment 360
Image: The Marcell Experimental Forest in northern Minnesota. Scientists are simulating different climates in these glass chambers to better understand how boreal forests will respond to rising temperatures. (Credit: OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY / U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY)
