Climate Change Prompts Makeover of New England's Forests, Dartmouth Study Finds
HANOVER, N.H. - Forest soils across New England will store fewer nutrients and metals - some beneficial, some harmful -- as climate change prompts maples and other deciduous trees to replace the region's iconic evergreen conifers, a Dartmouth College study finds.
The study appears in the journal Plant and Soil. A PDF is available on request.
"Based upon our findings, we conclude that a shift from coniferous to deciduous vegetation could decrease the accumulation and retention of major metals," says lead author Justin Richardson, who conducted the research as part of his doctorate from Dartmouth's Department of Earth Sciences. "Our results can help forest managers and biogeochemists assess the future impact of changing vegetation type on plant-essential and pollutant metal cycling in forests across the region."
Under various climate and land-use scenarios, coniferous stands are expected to lose 71 percent to 100 percent of their current range to deciduous stands across New England by 2085, particularly in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, due to increased temperature and precipitation and changes in timber harvesting. Deciduous trees have very different ecological and physical characteristics than conifers, so this switch could impact how they cycle nutrients and store toxic metals in their underlying soil.
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