Two recent publications dig into the impacts of compounding factors threatening New England trees.
Two recent publications dig into the impacts of compounding factors threatening New England trees.
As global temperatures rise, ecosystems face new pressures and often multiple challenges simultaneously. This was the case in 2016 in areas of the northeast that experienced a one-two punch of extreme drought and an onslaught of spongy moth caterpillars that feasted on a massive portion of the region’s oak leaves.
Eastern Connecticut, much of Rhode Island, and large swaths of Central Massachusetts were hit hard, says UConn Department of Natural Resources and the Environment Associate Professor Robert Fahey. This stacking of disturbances is expected to increase with climate change, and it is important to understand how forests are responding.
Fahey and his collaborators Danielle Tanzer ’21 MS, now at the University of Wisconsin; UConn Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Associate Professor Robert Bagchi; Audrey Barker Plotkin at the Harvad Forest; James Mickley ’17 Ph.D., now at Oregon State University; Keenan Rivers ’20 (CAHNR), now at Michigan Technological University; researcher Maya Sagarin, now at the University of California; and UConn Department of Natural Resources and the Environment Assistant Professor Chandi Witharana saw the opportunity to study these interactions and their impacts on defoliation and tree mortality and their findings are published in the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, and Forest Ecology and Management.
Read more at University of Connecticut
Photo Credit: Michael_Pointner via Pixabay
