at two University of Minnesota forest sites in northeastern Minnesota were warmed around the clock, from early spring to late fall, in the open air without the use of greenhouses or growth chambers. Two levels of potential 21st-century climate warming were used: roughly 1.6 degrees Celsius and roughly 3.1 C above ambient temperatures.
"Those impacts could reduce the capacity of our forests to produce timber, to host other plant, microbial and animal diversity, to dampen flooding, and—perhaps most important of all—to scrub carbon out of the air and hold it in wood and soil." But direct experimental tests of the effects of climate warming on boreal forests across a range of soil moisture conditions are rare and have generally been limited in size, scope and duration, according to the authors of the new study.
The researchers found that warming alone, or combined with reduced rainfall, increased juvenile mortality of all nine tree species and severely reduced growth in several northern conifer species—balsam fir, white spruce and white pine—that are common inAt the same time, modest warming enhanced the growth of some broadleaved hardwoods, including some oaks and maples, which are scarce in the boreal forest but much more common in temperate forests to the south.
UMich Nature It 'may'...and it may not! Vapid