A multi-institutional research team found that changing environmental conditions are affecting forests around the globe, leading to increasing tree death and uncertainty about the ability of forests to recover.
“There’s a lot of nuance just in the carbon dioxide response,” said Anthony Walker of Oak Ridge National Laboratory who contributed carbon dioxide analyses for the study published in Science. “We are examining the many tradeoffs and feedbacks. For instance, elevated carbon dioxide can spur tree growth while also increasing the risk of mortality associated with faster growth rates.”
The study concluded that pervasive shifts in forest vegetation are likely to accelerate in the future.