What do forests have to do with global climate change? What do ...

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Forests and
Global Climate
Change
by Allen M. Solomon, Ph.D.
The Fate of
Southern
Forests
by Livia Marqués
That Carbon
Dance
by Zoë Hoyle
We’re All
Downstream
by Zoë Hoyle
Going Up
Turkey Creek
by John Tibbetts
Forest Service scientists have been studying global change and
its effects on forests and ranges informally for many decades and
formally since passage of the U.S. Global Change Research Act
of 1990. More recently, the Forest Service as a whole has come to
recognize the threats and opportunities involved with maintaining
ecosystem services and products under rapidly changing climate
and climate variability.
Today, forests make up 214 million acres, or more than 65
percent, of the South’s land area, and provide a wealth of services
and products that range from clean air and water to fuel, food,
and medicinal plants. What does the future hold for Southern
forests?
Planting trees is often suggested as a way to “offset” human
contributions to atmospheric CO 2, but in reality it’s hard to
calculate just how many trees you need to plant because just how
much carbon trees sequester—and how that might change in
response to heightened CO 2—is not known. Scientists do know one
thing: It’s not going to be as simple as “more trees, more carbon
sequestered.”
Summer in the South, 2007. Temperatures reach the 90s and
100s for weeks on end. There’s literally no rain for months and
several States enter 2008 still tightening water restrictions. Is this
last summer a bitter taste of things to come? Will there be enough
water in the South for our future needs under present climate
change scenarios?
As development from the Charleston metropolitan area sprawls
ever closer to the Francis Marion National Forest, SRS scientists at
the Center for Forested Wetlands set their gauges to find out how
climate change might affect water quality and water availability
for future populations in this rapidly growing area.
compass—february 2008