Forests exist in a delicate balance with climate change - sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and hosting biodiversity, as long as droughts, wildfires and ecosystem shifts do not kill them first, a new study reveals.
Forests exist in a delicate balance with climate change - sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and hosting biodiversity, as long as droughts, wildfires and ecosystem shifts do not kill them first, a new study reveals.
Forests in some regions experience clear, consistent risks in three areas, but in other regions, the risk profile is less clear, because different approaches to assessing climate risk yield diverging answers.
Co-author Thomas Pugh, from the University of Birmingham, commented: “Increasingly, forests are experiencing climates unlike those to which they are used to. This can lead to large losses of trees through disturbances like fire or drought. Forests are adaptable – given time, many will change to be better suited to the conditions. But there is no guarantee that the adapted forests will store the same amount of carbon or support the same levels of biodiversity.
Read more at University of Birmingham
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