Journal
ECOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 25, Issue 6, Pages 1510-1520Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/ele.14018
Keywords
biotic agents; carbon cycle; disturbance; drought; nature-based climate solutions
Categories
Funding
- Microsoft
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- National Institute of Food and Agriculture [2018-67012-31496, 2018-67019-27850]
- National Science Foundation [1714972, 1802880, 2003017, 2003205, 2017494, 2044937]
- Direct For Biological Sciences [2003205] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Environmental Biology [2003017] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Environmental Biology [2003205] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Integrative Organismal Systems
- Direct For Biological Sciences [2044937] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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The study quantifies the impact of climate drivers on wildfire, climate stress-driven tree mortality, and insect-driven tree mortality in the United States, finding that current forest disturbance risks are widespread and projected to increase in the future. These results have important implications for improving carbon cycle modeling, conservation efforts, and climate policy.
Forests are currently a substantial carbon sink globally. Many climate change mitigation strategies leverage forest preservation and expansion, but rely on forests storing carbon for decades to centuries. Yet climate-driven disturbances pose critical risks to the long-term stability of forest carbon. We quantify the climate drivers that influence wildfire and climate stress-driven tree mortality, including a separate insect-driven tree mortality, for the contiguous United States for current (1984-2018) and project these future disturbance risks over the 21st century. We find that current risks are widespread and projected to increase across different emissions scenarios by a factor of >4 for fire and >1.3 for climate-stress mortality. These forest disturbance risks highlight pervasive climate-sensitive disturbance impacts on US forests and raise questions about the risk management approach taken by forest carbon offset policies. Our results provide US-wide risk maps of key climate-sensitive disturbances for improving carbon cycle modeling, conservation and climate policy.
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