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Climate Change and Forests: Good for Canada, Bad for Europe?
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2012-10-03 05:29:41, 조회 : 1,997 |
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Climate Change and Forests: Good for Canada, Bad for Europe?
Canada’s far northern territory of Nunavut has been a treeless tundra for millennia, but it could be home to flourishing forests by century’s end, due to global warming, according to Alexandre Guertin-Pasquier, University of Montreal geographer. Guertin-Pasquier, who presented his findings September 21 at the Canadian Paleontology Conference in Toronto, explained that tree fossils found in Nunavut indicate that forests of oak, spruce, and hickory did cover much of the territory about 2.6 million years ago, when the Earth was warmer, and that if current projections of warming bear out, those forests will return in full.
Meanwhile, global warming will shrink forests throughout Europe, according to a study led by Marc Hanewinkel from the Swiss Federal Research Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research. The study findings, which were published in the online journal Nature Climate Change, warn that much of the continent’s forest cover is composed of Norway spruce and other tree species that are accustomed to cooler climates. Sudden warming, combined with lengthier and more frequent droughts, would significantly harm them.
Other tree species that favor warmer temperatures, such as cork oak and Holm oak, might expand their ranges. These species, however, deliver lower economic returns for the timber industry, and they sequester less carbon dioxide. The study projects that climate-change-related damage will reduce the economic value of the continent’s forest land by 14% to 50%—an economic loss of 60 billion to 680 billion euros—unless the European community enacts swift and effective countermeasures to curb CO2.
Source: University of Montreal
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