Climate Change and Forest Disturbances

TLDR

Climate change alters forest disturbance regimes—temperature and precipitation shifts affect the occurrence, timing, frequency, duration, extent, and intensity of disturbances such as fire, drought, insect outbreaks, and storms—thereby influencing forest structure and carbon storage. Disturbances, both natural (fire, drought, insects, storms) and human‑induced (land‑use change, pollution), shape forest composition, structure, and function by driving tree mortality, altering community organization, and modulating carbon dynamics.

Abstract

S tudies of the effects of climate change on forests have focused on the ability of species to tolerate temperature and moisture changes and to disperse, but they have ignored the effects of disturbances caused by climate change (e.g., Ojima et al. 1991).Yet modeling studies indicate the importance of climate effects on disturbance regimes (He et al. 1999).Local, regional, and global changes in temperature and precipitation can influence the occurrence, timing, frequency, duration, extent, and intensity of disturbances (Baker 1995, Turner et al. 1998).Because trees can survive from decades to centuries and take years to become established, climate-change impacts are expressed in forests, in part, through alterations in disturbance regimes (Franklin et al. 1992, Dale et al. 2000).Disturbances, both human-induced and natural, shape forest systems by influencing their composition, structure, and functional processes.Indeed, the forests of the United States are molded by their land-use and disturbance history.Within the United States, natural disturbances having the greatest effects on forests include fire, drought, introduced species, insect and pathogen outbreaks, hurricanes, windstorms, ice storms, and landslides (Figure 1).Each disturbance affects forests differently.Some cause large-scale tree mortality, whereas others affect community structure and organization without causing massive mortality (e.g., ground fires).Forest disturbances influence how much carbon is stored in trees or dead wood.All these natural disturbances interact with human-induced effects on the environment, such as air pollution and land-use change resulting from resource extraction, agriculture, urban and suburban expansion, and recreation.Some disturbances can be functions of both natural and human conditions (e.g., forest fire ignition and spread) (Figure 2).