Tuesday August 6, 2024
NIDIS via Maven’s Notebook —
Alaska’s boreal forests are declining, as increasing drought stress and fire kill off the next generation of conifer trees. Where boreal forest has disappeared, new plant communities—like grasslands and aspen forests—have begun to take its place.
Elsewhere, in the southeastern United States, droughts have decimated saltmarsh vegetation, turning saltmarshes into mudflats or open water. In the Southwest, pinyon pines have experienced widespread die-offs during extreme droughts. Meanwhile, junipers and grasses have expanded.
Across the globe, natural resource managers now face the reality of stewarding such landscapes with vastly different species and functions. These are just three examples of drought-triggered ecological transformation, a growing phenomenon that is highlighted in a new paper in the journal BioScience.