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Soil warming and winter snowpacks: Implications for northern forest ecosystem functioning

Formally Refereed

Abstract

Forest ecosystem nutrient cycling is controlled to a large extent by environmental conditions, including soil and air temperature and patterns and forms of precipitation (i.e., rain, snow, and fog). Climate changes around the globe have led to increases in mean land surface temperatures (Hansen et al., 2010; Lawrimore et al., 2011; Jones et al., 2012; Rohde et al., 2013), altered patterns of precipitation (Smith et al., 2012), and an increased occurrence of extreme temperature and precipitation events (Hartmann et al., 2013) over the last several decades. Temperatures are expected to increase over the next century most strongly at high latitudes (Pithan and Mauritsen, 2014) and during winter months (Xia et al., 2014), which will have a large influence on seasonally snow-covered ecosystems, including many temperate and boreal forests at mid and high latitudes and elevations (Brown and Mote, 2009).

Citation

Sanders-DeMott, Rebecca; Campbell, John L.; Groffman, Peter M.; Rustad, Lindsey E.; Templer, Pamela H. 2019. Soil warming and winter snowpacks: Implications for northern forest ecosystem functioning. Chapter 10. In: Mohan, J.E., ed. Ecosystem Consequences of Soil Warming: Microbes, Vegetation, Fauna and Soil Biogeochemistry. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. 245-278. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813493-1.00011-9.
Citations
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/57952