Forest growth studies begin to turn up the heat

摘要

Across the United States, researchers are firing up experiments to determine how rising temperatures could reshape the nation's forests.rnThe studies encompass the pines and maples of eastern forests in Massachusetts and North Carolina, the spruce and fir of northern Minnesota, and the alpine tundra ecosystem above the treeline in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.rnTechnology to warm soils is more than a decade old, but altering the temperature above ground remains challenging, particularly in a forest. "People criticize just warming the soil, but it's difficult to warm stands of relatively large trees," says ecologist Scott Bridgham, of the University of Oregon in Eugene.