Wildfire Ponzi Scheme? The Continental Carbon Exchange

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Wildfire in Alaskan black spruce forests.

If carbon is currency, wildfires are the brokers; that is, they distribute carbon between land and air. In the short-run, fire emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Over time, it also strengthens subsequent carbon uptake through plant regrowth. This exchange is like a natural Ponzi scheme – the carbon offsets from yesterday’s fires take up today’s emissions…. Read more »

Fire-driven Changes to Gap Regeneration

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Arctic wildfire

Interior Alaska: black spruce and mosses as far as the eye can see. New research suggests that image may change dramatically over the next century. As the intensity of fires in interior Alaska increases, forest regrowth is shifting from spruce to deciduous species such as trembling aspen and Alaska paper birch. But intense fires also… Read more »

Shaping the Alaskan Forest. Canopy-down or forest-floor-up?

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white spruce forest in Alaska

While Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico recover from a devastating hurricane season, another natural disaster rages on the other side the continent. Following a record-hot summer and dry conditions, the northwestern United States and Canada have experienced one of the most intense fire seasons on record. As global temperatures rise, scientists will need a better… Read more »

A Glimpse into the Future: How Land Use Decisions Will Impact Forest Function

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How can researchers project the ways in which land-use changes will affect ecosystem services when they don’t yet know what course development will take? Integrated scenario analysis models several possible trajectories to examine the interactive effects that land-use change could have on ecosystem structure and function.

Coastal Everglades in the Cold: Mapping Ecological Sensitivity

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How sensitive are coastal ecosystems to sharp changes in temperature? Using a detailed spatial analysis in the Florida Everglades, researchers found that cold snaps reduced ecosystem productivity most dramatically in areas with low water levels that were located away from the coast. With more extreme weather events predicted in the future, knowing the likely effects of low temperature events on subtropical wetlands systems can inform management of these important ecosystems.

Demystifying Governance for Ecologists

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There are certain events, such as severe storms or a crash in financial markets, that catalyze transitions in social-ecological systems, in a process that is akin to the way a hurricane or insect outbreak might catalyze an ecological transition. To understand the patterns that emerge in social-ecological systems, ecologists must understand governance, a process rooted in the key social science concepts of power and networks.

What (and when) is the point-of-no-return?

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How-and when-do ecosystems change character? Are those shifts reversible? And what signs might precede them? Such questions are hard enough to answer in a single place. One might think that incorporating different kinds of ecosystems would only complicate the problem. But a group of scientists in the Long-Term Ecological Research Network is finding a remarkably consistent pattern by combining models and data across several long-term ecological experiments.

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