Forest composition change and biophysical climate feedbacks across boreal North America

Richard Massey, Brendan M. Rogers, Logan T. Berner, Sol Cooperdock, Michelle C. Mack, Xanthe J. Walker and Scott J. Goetz ()
Additional contact information
Richard Massey: Northern Arizona University
Brendan M. Rogers: Woodwell Climate Research Center
Logan T. Berner: Northern Arizona University
Sol Cooperdock: Woodwell Climate Research Center
Michelle C. Mack: Northern Arizona University
Xanthe J. Walker: Northern Arizona University
Scott J. Goetz: Northern Arizona University

Nature Climate Change, 2023, vol. 13, issue 12, 1368-1375

Abstract: Abstract Deciduous tree cover is expected to increase in North American boreal forests with climate warming and wildfire. This shift in composition has the potential to generate biophysical cooling via increased land surface albedo. Here we use Landsat-derived maps of continuous tree canopy cover and deciduous fractional composition to assess albedo change over recent decades. We find, on average, a small net decrease in deciduous fraction from 2000 to 2015 across boreal North America and from 1992 to 2015 across Canada, despite extensive fire disturbance that locally increased deciduous vegetation. We further find near-neutral net biophysical change in radiative forcing associated with albedo when aggregated across the domain. Thus, while there have been widespread changes in forest composition over the past several decades, the net changes in composition and associated post-fire radiative forcing have not induced systematic negative feedbacks to climate warming over the spatial and temporal scope of our study.

Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01851-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcli:v:13:y:2023:i:12:d:10.1038_s41558-023-01851-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nclimate/

DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01851-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Climate Change is currently edited by Bronwyn Wake

More articles in Nature Climate Change from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().