Future climate change effects on US forest composition may offset benefits of reduced atmospheric deposition of N and S

Abstract

Climate change and atmospheric deposition of nitrogen (N) and sulfur (S) are important drivers of forest demography. Here we apply previously derived growth and survival responses for 94 tree species, representing >90% of the contiguous US forest basal area, to project how changes in mean annual temperature, precipitation, and N and S deposition from 20 different future scenarios may affect forest composition to 2100. We find that under the low climate change scenario (RCP 4.5), reductions in aboveground tree biomass from higher temperatures are roughly offset by increases in aboveground tree biomass from reductions in N and S deposition. However, under the higher climate change scenario (RCP 8.5) the decreases from climate change overwhelm increases from reductions in N and S deposition. These broad trends underlie wide variation among species. We found averaged across temperature scenarios the relative abundance of 60 species were projected to decrease more than 5% and 20 species were projected to increase more than 5%; and reductions of N and S deposition led to a decrease for 13 species and an increase for 40 species. This suggests large shifts in the composition of US forests in the future. Negative climate effects were mostly from elevated temperature and were not offset by scenarios with wetter conditions. We found that by 2100 an estimated 1 billion trees under the RCP 4.5 scenario and 20 billion trees under the RCP 8.5 scenario may be pushed outside the temperature record upon which these relationships were derived. These results may not fully capture future changes in forest composition as several other factors were not included. Overall efforts to reduce atmospheric deposition of N and S will likely be insufficient to overcome climate change impacts on forest demography across much of the United States unless we adhere to the low climate change scenario.