In a future with higher temperatures and other climate changes, Alaska’s boreal forests could look significantly different than they do now. According to a new study that is part of NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), the warmer, drier conditions of the future could lead to a net loss of plant life in some regions of Alaska, while also changing the ratio of species that grow in them. These vegetation changes caused by global climate change could, in turn, affect Arctic climate in complex ways …
GEODE lab postdoctoral scholar Adrianna Foster has updated an individual-tree based forest model—the University of Virginia Forest Model Enhanced (UVAFME)— to improve simulation of forest dynamics and biotic-abiotic interactions in the boreal region.
Read more Adrianna’s modeling approach here…
…and more about what the models are showing here.
To read the full paper, published in Ecological Modeling, see here.