New Handouts Summarize Tree Species Responses to Climate Change

NIACS created a series of 2-page handouts that summarize how individual tree species are expected to respond to climate change across the Northeast based on regional climate change vulnerability assessments. Each handout includes model projections based on future climate scenarios and models like the Climate Change Tree Atlas. We think they're a handy way to show a lot of information and get people thinking about managing climate change risk and opportunity. Handouts are available for subregions within each of the three project areas: New England and Northern New York Mid-Atlantic Central Appalachians

Ecosystems will be increasingly affected by a changing climate, and understanding the potential impacts is an important first step to sustaining healthy forests in the face of changing conditions. We develop vulnerability assessments in each of our project areas in order to provide high-quality information about future changes in climate and the potential effects on the forest ecosystems specific to that particular region. This information helps to identify the characteristics that put forest communities at greatest risk and can be used to inform natural resource management.

Several vulnerability assessments have been developed through the Climate Change Response Framework. Although each vulnerability assessment is tailored to meet the needs identified within each region, they are designed to share similarities in general format and content. Our vulnerability assessments:

Focus on forest ecosystems within a defined region
Address vulnerabilities of individual tree species and forest or natural community types within the region
Provide gridded historical and modeled climate change information
Employ at least two different forest impact models to project changes for tree species
Use panels of scientists and managers with local expertise to put scientific results in context

To find Ecoregional Assessments for: