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      Assessing the long-term interactions of climate change and timber markets on forest land and carbon storage

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      Environmental Research Letters
      IOP Publishing

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          Abstract

          This study provides a comprehensive assessment of the environmental and economic impacts of climate change on global and regional forests from now through 2200. By integrating the representative concentration pathway (RCP) 2.6 and RCP 8.5 emission scenarios with climate models, a vegetation model, socio-economic scenarios, and a forest economic model, the study explores long run adjustments of both ecosystems and markets to climate change that have not been studied before. The ecological model suggests that global forest productivity increases under RCP 8.5. The overall supply of timber expands faster than demand through the 23rd century lowering timber prices and creating net benefits in the timber sector. Consumers benefit the most from the lower prices but these same low prices tend to damage forest owners, especially in the tropics. Even without a formal sequestration policy, average global forest carbon is projected to increase by 6%–8% by 2100. Under the RCP 2.6, forest carbon remains stable through 2200 but under RCP 8.5 it is simulated to increase by another 8% with a very heterogeneous distribution across world regions. Under both RCPs, global forest area is projected to increase relative to a no-climate change case until 2150, but possibly decline thereafter.

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          The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview

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            Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests

            Increased forest fire activity across the western United States in recent decades has contributed to widespread forest mortality, carbon emissions, periods of degraded air quality, and substantial fire suppression expenditures. Although numerous factors aided the recent rise in fire activity, observed warming and drying have significantly increased fire-season fuel aridity, fostering a more favorable fire environment across forested systems. We demonstrate that human-caused climate change caused over half of the documented increases in fuel aridity since the 1970s and doubled the cumulative forest fire area since 1984. This analysis suggests that anthropogenic climate change will continue to chronically enhance the potential for western US forest fire activity while fuels are not limiting. Increased forest fire activity across the western continental United States (US) in recent decades has likely been enabled by a number of factors, including the legacy of fire suppression and human settlement, natural climate variability, and human-caused climate change. We use modeled climate projections to estimate the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to observed increases in eight fuel aridity metrics and forest fire area across the western United States. Anthropogenic increases in temperature and vapor pressure deficit significantly enhanced fuel aridity across western US forests over the past several decades and, during 2000–2015, contributed to 75% more forested area experiencing high (>1 σ) fire-season fuel aridity and an average of nine additional days per year of high fire potential. Anthropogenic climate change accounted for ∼55% of observed increases in fuel aridity from 1979 to 2015 across western US forests, highlighting both anthropogenic climate change and natural climate variability as important contributors to increased wildfire potential in recent decades. We estimate that human-caused climate change contributed to an additional 4.2 million ha of forest fire area during 1984–2015, nearly doubling the forest fire area expected in its absence. Natural climate variability will continue to alternate between modulating and compounding anthropogenic increases in fuel aridity, but anthropogenic climate change has emerged as a driver of increased forest fire activity and should continue to do so while fuels are not limiting.
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              Warming and earlier spring increase western U.S. forest wildfire activity.

              Western United States forest wildfire activity is widely thought to have increased in recent decades, yet neither the extent of recent changes nor the degree to which climate may be driving regional changes in wildfire has been systematically documented. Much of the public and scientific discussion of changes in western United States wildfire has focused instead on the effects of 19th- and 20th-century land-use history. We compiled a comprehensive database of large wildfires in western United States forests since 1970 and compared it with hydroclimatic and land-surface data. Here, we show that large wildfire activity increased suddenly and markedly in the mid-1980s, with higher large-wildfire frequency, longer wildfire durations, and longer wildfire seasons. The greatest increases occurred in mid-elevation, Northern Rockies forests, where land-use histories have relatively little effect on fire risks and are strongly associated with increased spring and summer temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
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                Journal
                Environmental Research Letters
                Environ. Res. Lett.
                IOP Publishing
                1748-9326
                January 13 2021
                January 01 2021
                January 13 2021
                January 01 2021
                : 16
                : 1
                : 014051
                Article
                10.1088/1748-9326/abd589
                63656321-a2bd-43c0-a4ed-bff557d0adce
                © 2021

                http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

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