14 DAY TRIAL // In a rare investigation on how ecosystems respond to the growing influence of global warming and climate change, researchers at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have determined that trees in the Eastern United States are now growing faster than they did in the past 225 years. The find is unique in the sense that it provides a window into the deviations from the long-term, average growing speed that trees experience on account of external factors. Some species of trees require centuries to develop, and even more to reach maturity, ScienceDaily reports.
The new investigation, which appears in the latest issue of the respected journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), was conducted by Smithsonian ecologist Geoffrey Parker. He and his team focused their attention on 55 stands of mixed hardwood forests, located in Maryland. The group concluded that the forest tracts, some of each were as large as two square acres, were accumulating mass at a rate that was a lot higher than anyone estimated before the study started. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute postdoctoral fellow Sean McMahon also participated in this research.
The team found that the forests were accumulating an average of two extra tons of material each year, per acre. This is the equivalent of a two-foot-wide tree growing in less than a year. This line of study is extremely important, because forests and adjacent vegetation are responsible for storing vast amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the main culprit for global warming and human-induced climate change. Because of this, the faith of the trees' growth patterns is directly related to important atmospheric events, such as weather patterns, nutrient cycles, climate change and biodiversity.
The new work also demonstrates once again the unpredictable nature of ecosystems. This is bad news, as they are a very important part of the group of factors that dictates how our planet will react to the atmospheric changes we are promoting. Therefore, producing accurate computer models of how the future may look like is becoming very hard to do, and almost pointless, seeing how the data collected today will most likely not resemble those collected next year. The researchers believe that the changes are owed to the fact that gradual warming has allowed trees to gain an extra warm week over the past 22 years, during which time they continue to develop.