Plant migrations role on future carbon balance from climate change in Northern North America

Steve Flanagan, University of Maryland Geography Dept, saf204@gmail.com (Presenter)
George Hurtt, University of Maryland, gchurtt@umd.edu
Justin Fisk, University of Maryland, fisk@umd.edu
Ritvik Sahajpal, UMD College Park, ritvik@umd.edu

Terrestrial ecosystem type boundaries are anticipated to reorganize with climate change. Ecosystem reorganization will influence the carbon balance, particularly in transition zones where the dominant plant functional type changes as withdrawal and invasion occur. These interactions can be simulated with advanced ecosystem models but to date efforts to forecast the future of forested systems have oversimplified or overlooked the role of plant migration in carbon balance. The computational time and resources to simulate individual tree migration over large domains have limited research on plant migrations influence on the carbon balance from climate change. In response to this, an advance ecosystem model that that uses a size and age-structured approximation for the first moment of the stochastic ecosystem model was modified to simulate migration. By pseudo-spatially simulating migration representative forests do not need to be used and domain size is not a limiting factor. With terrestrial ecosystem type boundaries potential to become transition zones under climate change, that influence overall carbon balance, the domain of Northern North America was simulated. The area was chosen for its anticipated northern expansion of deciduous forests into regions previously dominated by evergreen forests, and evergreen forests into areas previously classified as tundra. Current and future climate datasets were then used to simulate how the plant functional type distribution and carbon balance is affected when comparing runs of no migration, instantaneous migration, and fixed rate migration

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Theme 1: Tracking habitat change through new integrative approaches and products   (Mon 1:30 PM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Hurtt, George: Using NASA Remote Sensing and Models to Advance Integrated Assessments of Coupled Human-Forest Dynamics for North America ...details

Poster Location ID: 29