Ayres Abstracts
| McNulty, S. G., P. L. Lorio, Jr., M. P. Ayres and J. D. Reeve. 1997. Predictions of southern pine beetle populations under historic and projected climate using a forest ecosystem model. Pages 617-634 in R. A. Mickler and S. Fox, editors. The productivity and sustainability of southern forest ecosystems in a changing environment. Springer-Verlag, New York. pdf |
| Initial efforts to correlate the present and prior year's soil water stress and net primary productivity (NPP), and the prior year's average southern pine beetle (SPB) population with present-year average annual SPB population have proven moderately successful. This success has lead to the attempt to predict how potential future climate change could affect future SPB populations. Depending on the climate scenario and site location, southern pine NPP and soil water stress could be significantly reduced across forested areas in the southern United States. Sites located in the warmest sections of the present pine range are more sensitive to changes in climate than are pine sites located in drier or cooler areas. These predictions also suggest that the region is much more susceptible to changes in air temperature than changes in precipitation. If our model predictions are correct, climate change would have serious potential socioeconomic implications for the southern U.S. timber industry. However, additional research is needed to assess the effects that other atmospheric changes (e.g., CO2, O3, NOx, SOx), genetics and species replacement may have on forest processes, before a complete assessment of climate change effects on forest productivity, water use and SPB populations can be made. |