A forest moves in Alaska

It sounds like something out of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but sadly it's yet another study showing what happens when a climate changes. This latest news comes from the Arctic Sounder: 

A new study released in the scientific journal Ecology Letters offers one of the first confirmations of a wholesale shift in the boreal forest ecosystem due to climate change.

Among the findings, researchers said, is increased tree growth in the Western Alaska tundra margin.

Collaborators on the study, which compared three-ring data to satellite images, include Glenn Juday, a professor of forest ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and co-author of the article.

"This is one of the first extensive analyses of annual growth and climate response of black spruce in Alaska," said Juday, who collaborated on the UAF research with Valerie Barber, Patricia Heiser and Emily Sousa.

The study found that tree growth declined across most of the current area of Alaska boreal forest but increased in a smaller area on the cold margins of the forest.

Scientists at the Woods Hole Research Center and three other institutions based in Alaska and France conducted the study. UAF scientists were instrumental in the project, which involved one of the largest and most widely distributed samples of tree-ring data ever analyzed in Alaska: 839 trees, including 627 white spruce from 46 stands and 212 black spruce from 42 stands.

"The tree rings tell us for sure what's happening on the ground, and the satellite data covers the whole region," said Juday. "Recent temperature increases have reduced tree growth over most of central Alaska, and increased growth in places where the temperature used to be too low for optimum growth, such as the Western Alaska tundra margin. Summer temperatures in central Interior Alaska are now almost too warm for white spruce to survive."

More information on Arctic findings from the Woods Hole Research Center can be found here.

Information on what the Church in America is saying about climate change can be found here.