Nature editorial connects the dots between forests, models, and funding

From Plant Press, Vol. 25, No. 4, October 2022.

A Nature editorial (608: 449; 2022) contends that it is well-past time to fund forest science like our future depends on it, stating, “Forests are our life-support system, and we should be more serious about taking their pulse.”

Forest systems store about half of the world’s carbon. They also take up 25% of all new anthropogenic carbon emissions; but can we expect them to continue doing so as climate change intensifies? Dynamic global vegetation models are our best way of anticipating the answer. They are also incredibly difficult to create due to the complexity of forest systems and the limits of drawing upon studies that were conducted at single forest sites.

Map from Dow, et al. (2022) depicting sampling locations of tree-ring chronologies analyzed in the study. Sites are colored by the xylem porosity type of species sampled: ring porous (RP), diffuse porous (DP), or both.

A new Nature paper by Dow, et al. (608: 552-557; 2022) uses dendrometer data from Harvard Forest and Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute Forest Dynamics Plots, plus tree-ring records from 108 forests across the eastern US to examine the impact of warmer springs on carbon sequestration capacities of forests. Contrary to the expectations of many vegetation models, the data from Dow, et al. indicates that warmer springs do not lead to increased wood growth. Consequently, current vegetation models are overestimating the capacity of forests to mitigate climate change. This paper was lead-authored by Cameron Dow who began this manuscript with colleagues during his internship in Kristina Anderson-Teixeira’s ForestGEO Ecosystems & Climate Lab.

The Nature editorial highlights the connections between complex forests, complex models, and complex funding systems. To reflect forest dynamics accurately, modelers need access to long-term data sets. Increasingly, though, long-term funding is unavailable, the current philanthropic landscape favoring three-to-five-year funding cycles. Commenting on the repercussions of these short funding cycles, ForestGEO Director, Stuart Davies, notes, “We have trained people and then lost them due to job insecurity.” Short-term funding fails to provide job stability to the skilled technicians whose labor makes the data possible.

Dynamic global vegetation models inform policy decisions, but their accuracy is hindered when the assumptions they are built with do not reflect the more complicated reality. In short: We need forests; we need data; we need funding.