Modeling the effects of varied forest management regimes on carbon dynamics in jack pine stands under climate change

2013 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 469-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weifeng Wang ◽  
Changhui Peng ◽  
Daniel D. Kneeshaw ◽  
Guy R. Larocque ◽  
Xiangdong Lei ◽  
...  

Climate change and its potential effects on ecosystems justify the need to implement forest management strategies that increase carbon (C) sequestration. A process-based model, TRIPLEX-Management, was used to investigate how to increase C sequestration within managed jack pine (Pinus banksiana Lamb.) forests. The simulations included a constant climate scenario and two climate change scenarios generated from the Coupled Global Climate Model (CGCM 3.1). A total of 36 forest management scenarios (a control where no forest management occurred, five varied rotation length harvesting-only regimes, and combinations of six thinning regimes and five rotation lengths) were simulated under each climate scenario for nine sites characterized by stocking levels from 0.3 to 0.7. A significant increase in C sequestration was generated under the climate change scenarios compared with those under constant climate. Mean annual net ecosystem productivity (NEP) varied with rotation length, but was not changed by precommercial thinning. Future studies should consider life cycle analysis of harvested wood products as in this study they were assumed to be a permanent C sink. Climate warming might enhance limited positive effects of forest thinning on C sequestration. Shortening rotation length from 70–80 years to 50 years might enhance NEP, increase wood production, and decrease the risk of climate change impacts on jack pine forests.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl-Fredrik Johannesson ◽  
Klaus Steenberg Larsen ◽  
Brunon Malicki ◽  
Jenni Nordén

<p>Boreal forests are among the most carbon (C) rich forest types in the world and store up to 80% of its total C in the soil. Forest soil C development under climate change has received increased scientific attention yet large uncertainties remain, not least in terms of magnitude and direction of soil C responses. As with climate change, large uncertainties remain in terms of the effects of forest management on soil C sequestration and storage. Nonetheless, it is clear that forest management measures can have far reaching effects on ecosystem functioning and soil conditions. For example, clear cutting is a widely undertaken felling method in Scandinavia which profoundly affects the forest ecosystem and its functioning, including the soil. Nitrogen (N) fertilization is another common practice in Scandinavia which, despite uncertainties regarding effects on soil C dynamics, is being promoted as a climate change mitigation tool. A more novel practice of biochar addition to soils has been shown to have positive effects on soil conditions, including soil C storage, but studies on biochar in the context of forests are few.</p><p>In the face of climate change, the ForBioFunCtioN project is dedicated to investigating the response of boreal forest soil CO<sub>2</sub> and CH<sub>4</sub> fluxes to experimentally increased temperatures and increased precipitation – climatic changes in line with projections over Norway – within a forest management context. The experiment is set in a Norwegian spruce-dominated bilberry chronosequence, including a clear-cut site, a middle-aged thinned stand, a mature stand and an old unmanaged stand. Warming, simulated increased precipitation, N fertilizer and biochar additions will be applied on experimental plots in an additive manner that allows for disentangling the effects of individual parameters from interaction effects. Flux measurements will be undertaken at high temporal resolution using the state-of-the-art LI-7810 Trace Gas Analyzer (©LI-COR Biosciences). The presentation will show the experimental setup and first measurements from the large-scale experiment.</p>


Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1667
Author(s):  
Gabriel Landry ◽  
Evelyne Thiffault ◽  
Dominic Cyr ◽  
Lucas Moreau ◽  
Yan Boulanger ◽  
...  

The forest sector can help reduce atmospheric CO2 through carbon (C) sequestration and storage and wood substitution of more polluting materials. However, climate change can have an impact on the C fluxes we are trying to leverage through forestry. We calculated the difference in CO2 eq. fluxes between ecosystem-based forest management and total forest conservation in the context of the temperate-boreal forest ecotone of Quebec (Canada), taking into account fluxes from forest ecosystems, wood product life cycle, and the substitution effect of wood products on markets. Over the 2020–2120 period, in the absence of climate change, ecosystem-based forest management and wood production caused average net annual emissions of 66.9 kilotonnes (kt) of CO2 eq. year−1 (relative to forest conservation), and 15.4 kt of CO2 eq. year−1 when assuming a 100% substitution effect of wood products. While management increased the ecosystem C sink, emissions from degradation of largely short-lived wood products caused the system to be a net source. Moreover, climate warming would decrease the capacity of ecosystems to sequester C and cause a shift towards more hardwood species. Our study highlights the need to adapt the industrial network towards an increased capacity of processing hardwoods into long-lived products and/or products with high substitution potential.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1370-1382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asma Hanif ◽  
Ashwin Dhanasekar ◽  
Anthony Keene ◽  
Huishu Li ◽  
Kenneth Carlson

Abstract Projected climate change impacts on the hydrological regime and corresponding flood risks were examined for the years 2030 (near-term) and 2050 (long-term), under representative concentration pathways (RCP) 4.5 (moderate) and 8.5 (high) emission scenarios. The United States Army Corps of Engineers' (USACE) Hydrologic Engineering Center's Hydrologic Modeling System was used to simulate the complete hydrologic processes of the various dendritic watershed systems and USACEs' Hydrologic Engineering Center's River Analysis System hydraulic model was used for the two-dimensional unsteady flow flood calculations. Climate projections are based on recent global climate model simulations developed for the International Panel on Climate Change, Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5. Hydrographs for frequent (high-recurrence interval) storms were derived from 30-year historical daily precipitation data and decadal projections for both time frames and RCP scenarios. Since the climate projections for each scenario only represented ten years of data, 100-year or 500-year storms cannot be derived. Hence, this novel approach of identifying frequent storms is used as an indicator to compare across the various time frames and climate scenarios. Hydrographs were used to generate inundation maps and results are used to identify vulnerabilities and formulate adaptation strategies to flooding at 43 locations worldwide.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Faming Wang ◽  
Xiaoliang Lu ◽  
Christian J. Sanders ◽  
Jianwu Tang

AbstractCoastal wetlands are large reservoirs of soil carbon (C). However, the annual C accumulation rates contributing to the C storage in these systems have yet to be spatially estimated on a large scale. We synthesized C accumulation rate (CAR) in tidal wetlands of the conterminous United States (US), upscaled the CAR to national scale, and predicted trends based on climate change scenarios. Here, we show that the mean CAR is 161.8 ± 6 g Cm−2 yr−1, and the conterminous US tidal wetlands sequestrate 4.2–5.0 Tg C yr−1. Relative sea level rise (RSLR) largely regulates the CAR. The tidal wetland CAR is projected to increase in this century and continue their C sequestration capacity in all climate change scenarios, suggesting a strong resilience to sea level rise. These results serve as a baseline assessment of C accumulation in tidal wetlands of US, and indicate a significant C sink throughout this century.


Author(s):  
Irvin Alberto Mosquera ◽  
Luis V. S. Sagrilo ◽  
Paulo M. Videiro ◽  
Fernando Sousa

Abstract Design life of offshore structures is in general in the 20-30 years range, with some cases going up to 50 years. Fatigue is one of the major design criteria for such structures. Climate change may affect the fatigue life of offshore structures, it would be necessary to update the design procedures to take into account climate change effects on structural performance. This paper aims to investigate the impact of climate change in the long-term fatigue life of offshore structures due to wave loading. For this purpose, available environmental conditions for two locations (South East Brazilian Coast and North Atlantic Ocean) generated by the HadGEM-2S global climate model, considering RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 (Representative Concentration Pathway - RCP) future scenarios and the historical (past) scenarios are considered. The assessment in both locations is performed for two structural models: an idealized stress spectrum for a generic fatigue hot-spot and a Steel Lazy Wave Riser (SLWR) connected to a Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO). Fatigue life is estimated using the S-N curve approach. Results show that the impact on the fatigue life depends on the structure dynamic characteristics, on the geographic location and mainly on the greenhouse emission scenario. In general, for the Brazilian location, when compared to the historical scenario, most of the future scenarios lead to slightly higher fatigue damages (lower fatigue lives). On the other hand, for the North Atlantic location, there is not a clear trend for future climate change scenarios.


2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 356-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renhua Yan ◽  
Jiacong Huang ◽  
Yan Wang ◽  
Junfeng Gao ◽  
Lingyan Qi

The response of hydrologic circulation to climate and land use changes is important in studying the historical, present, and future evolution of aquatic ecosystems. In this study, the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 multi-model ensemble and a raster-based Xin'anjiang model were applied to simulate future streamflows under three climate change scenarios and two land use/cover change conditions in the Xinjiang Basin, China, and to investigate the combined effect of future climate and land use/cover changes on streamflow. Simulation results indicated that future climate and land use/cover changes affect not only the seasonal distributions of streamflow, but also the annual amounts of streamflow. For each climate scenario, the average monthly streamflows increase by more than 4% in autumn and early winter, while decreasing by more than −26% in spring and summer for the 21st century. The annual streamflows present a clear decreasing trend of −27%. Compared with land use/cover change, climate change affects streamflow change more. Land use/cover change can mitigate the climate change effect from January to August and enhance it in other months. These results can provide scientific information for regional water resources management and land use planning in the future.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicitas Hansen ◽  
Danijel Belusic ◽  
Klaus Wyser

<p>The large-scale atmospheric circulation is one of the most important factors influencing weather and climate conditions on different timescales. Its short- and long-term changes considerably determine both mean and extreme values of surface parameters like temperature or precipitation rates. Future changes of circulation patterns are of particular interest as these may significantly alter or amplify the expected thermodynamic changes due to changing concentrations of greenhouse gases, albedo and land use. We analyse both historical as well as future climate simulations of the SMHI large ensemble (S-LENS) performed with the EC-Earth3 global climate model to examine large-scale circulation situations and their association to extremes in precipitation and temperature over Sweden. Various methods exist to classify mostly sea level pressure or geopotential height fields into characteristic circulation types, and we compare several of these methods for their applicability to represent precipitation and temperature variability over our region of interest. S-LENS consists of a 50-member ensemble for a historical period (1970-2014) and four 50-member climate change scenario ensembles covering the 21st century differing in terms of assumptions made for future radiative forcing development. We study the efficiency of circulation types in the historical period to give rise to extremes, and examine further the frequency and within-type changes of those circulation types associated with extremes by the middle and the end of the 21st century under the different climate change scenarios. S-LENS with its comparatively large number of both multi-decadal scenarios and realizations for each scenario serves as a perfect testbed to study potential changes in events of low frequency within the environment of a single model.</p>


2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (12) ◽  
pp. 4941-4956 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Mahat ◽  
A. Anderson

Abstract. Rivers in Southern Alberta are vulnerable to climate change because much of the river water originates as snow in the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Changes in likelihood of forest disturbance (wildfire, insects, logging, etc.) may also have impacts that are compounded by climate change. This study evaluates the impacts of climate and forest changes on streamflow in the upper parts of the Oldman River in Southern Alberta using a conceptual hydrological model, HBV-EC (Hydrologiska Byråns attenbalansavdelning, Environment Canada), in combination with a stochastic weather generator (LARS-WG) driven by GCM (global climate model) output climate data. Three climate change scenarios (A1B, A2 and B1) are selected to cover the range of possible future climate conditions (2020s, 2050s, and 2080s). The GCM projected less than a 10% increase in precipitation in winter and a similar amount of precipitation decrease in summer. These changes in projected precipitation resulted in up to a 200% (9.3 mm) increase in winter streamflow in February and up to a 63% (31.2 mm) decrease in summer flow in June. Flow also decreased in July and August, when irrigation is important; these reduced river flows during this season could impact agriculture production. The amplification in the streamflow is mostly driven by the projected increase in temperature that is predicted to melt winter snow earlier, resulting in lower water availability during the summer. Uncertainty analysis was completed using a guided GLUE (generalized likelihood uncertainty estimation) approach to obtain the best 100 parameter sets and associated ranges of streamflows. The impacts of uncertainty in streamflows were higher in spring and summer than in winter and fall. Forest change compounded the climate change impact by increasing the winter flow; however, it did not reduce the summer flow.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heliot Zarza ◽  
Enrique Martínez-Meyer ◽  
Gerardo Suzán ◽  
Gerardo Ceballos

Veterinaria México OA ISSN: 2448-6760Cite this as:Zarza H, Martínez-Meyer E, Suzán G, Ceballos G. Geographic distribution of Desmodus rotundus in Mexico under current and future climate change scenarios: Implications for bovine paralytic rabies infection. Veterinaria México OA. 2017;4(3). doi: 10.21753/vmoa.4.3.390.Climate change may modify the spatial distribution of reservoirs hosting emerging and reemerging zoonotic pathogens, and forecasting these changes is essential for developing prevention and adaptation strategies. The most important reservoir of bovine paralytic rabies in tropical countries, is the vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus). In Mexico, the cattle industry loses more than $2.6 million US dollar, annually to this infectious disease. Therefore, we predicted the change in the distribution of D. rotundus due to future climate change scenarios, and examined the likely effect that the change in its distribution will have on paralytic rabies infections in Mexico. We used the correlative maximum entropy based model algorithm to predict the potential distribution of D. rotundus. Consistent with the literature, our results showed that temperature was the variable most highly associated with the current distribution of vampire bats. The highest concentration of bovine rabies was in Central and Southeastern Mexico, regions that also have high cattle population densities. Furthermore, our climatic envelope models predicted that by 2050–2070, D. rotundus will lose 20 % of its current distribution while the northern and central regions of Mexico will become suitable habitats for D. rotundus. Together, our study provides an advanced notice of the likely change in spatial patterns of D. rotundus and bovine paralytic rabies, and presents an important tool for strengthening the National Epidemiological Surveillance System and Monitoring programmes, useful for establishing holistic, long-term strategies to control this disease in Mexico.Figure 4. Modelled suitability for future distribution of Desmodus rotundus according to Global Climate Model GFDL-CM3 for two time periods (2050 and 2070), and two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP 4.5 and 8.5). Left-hand column shows suitability values, with blue indicating more suitable conditions.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 809 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gintautas Mozgeris ◽  
Vilis Brukas ◽  
Nerijus Pivoriūnas ◽  
Gintautas Činga ◽  
Ekaterina Makrickienė ◽  
...  

Research Highlights: Validating modelling approach which combines global framework conditions in the form of climate and policy scenarios with the use of forest decision support system to assess climate change impacts on the sustainability of forest management. Background and Objectives: Forests and forestry have been confirmed to be sensitive to climate. On the other hand, human efforts to mitigate climate change influence forests and forest management. To facilitate the evaluation of future sustainability of forest management, decision support systems are applied. Our aims are to: (1) Adopt and validate decision support tool to incorporate climate change and its mitigation impacts on forest growth, global timber demands and prices for simulating future trends of forest ecosystem services in Lithuania, (2) determine the magnitude and spatial patterns of climate change effects on Lithuanian forests and forest management in the future, supposing that current forestry practices are continued. Materials and Methods: Upgraded version of Lithuanian forestry simulator Kupolis was used to model the development of all forests in the country until 2120 under management conditions of three climate change scenarios. Selected stand-level forest and forest management characteristics were aggregated to the level of regional branches of the State Forest Enterprise and analyzed for the spatial and temporal patterns of climate change effects. Results: Increased forest growth under a warmer future climate resulted in larger tree dimensions, volumes of growing stock, naturally dying trees, harvested assortments, and also higher profits from forestry activities. Negative impacts were detected for the share of broadleaved tree species in the standing volume and the tree species diversity. Climate change effects resulted in spatially clustered patterns—increasing stand productivity, and amounts of harvested timber were concentrated in the regions with dominating coniferous species, while the same areas were exposed to negative dynamics of biodiversity-related forest attributes. Current forest characteristics explained 70% or more of the variance of climate change effects on key forest and forest management attributes. Conclusions: Using forest decision support systems, climate change scenarios and considering the balance of delivered ecosystem services is suggested as a methodological framework for validating forest management alternatives aiming for more adaptiveness in Lithuanian forestry.


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