Project Title: Projecting impacts of climate change on potential productivity of forests in the Pacific West. Project Personnel: Tara Barrett, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Greg Latta, and Temesgen Hailemariam, Oregon State University Project Contact: Tara Barrett, tbarrett@fs.fed.us, (907) 743‐9406 Project Description: As global climate changes over the next century, forest productivity is expected to change as well. We are using forest inventory plots that are systematically located in forests throughout the Pacific West to understand how measured potential mean annual increment can be explained by the interaction of annual temperature, precipitation, and precipitation in excess of evapotranspiration through the growing season. The resulting model is then coupled with climate change output from generalized circulation models to predict how forest productivity could change under a variety of different climate scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. Project Deliverables: Latta, G.; Temesgen, H.; Adams, D.; Barrett, T. [In press]. Analysis of potential impacts of climate change on forests of the United States Pacific Northwest. Forest Ecology and Management. Latta, G.; Temesgen, T.; Barrett, T. 2009. Mapping and imputing potential forest productivity of Pacific Northwest forests using climate variables. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 39: 1197‐1207. Manuscript to be developed in 2010: Potential impact of climate change on forest productivity in coastal Alaska. Project Outcomes: Forest productivity is a driving factor in carbon sequestration, biomass and fuel accumulation, and economic returns from forest management. These projections of how potential productivity may change in future decades provide forest managers and policymakers with information about the relative magnitude of effects and potential variability of impacts across a range of climate scenarios. Updated 9/8/2009