Modeling changes in Siberian forests under climate change, 2020-2024

Boreal forests are found at high northern latitudes and form the largest terrestrial biome in the world. They comprise 30-50% of the world’s forest carbon stocks (vs. 14% in temperate forests. Temperatures are increasing rapidly in high northern latitudes (IPCC 2021), resulting in modified disturbance regimes and thawing of permafrost, and the socio-economic pressure to harvest timber is growing in currently unharvested areas. Attempts to predict how these changes will affect boreal forests must account for interactions among multiple disturbances (e.g., wind, insects, fire, harvest), seed dispersal, species growth and competition, and changing climate, and therefore uncertainty persists about how these changes will affect composition and function of this biome. Our objectives for this research were to 1) Use LANDIS-II to project forest dynamics under a range of climate and disturbance scenarios across a latitudinal gradient spanning the Siberian taiga from the arctic tundra to steppe ecotones, 2) Quantify the change in albedo and harvesting across bioclimatic zones and climates, 3) Identify the factor(s) that are the strongest drivers of these changes