Location
Logan, UT
Event Website
http://restoringthewest.org/
Abstract
The last 150 years has seen major increases in the spatial extent and in the biomass levels of all Great Basin woodlands. This has generated interest in using these woodlands for biomass harvest. Important to the success of such utilization is the long-term stability in the available biomass needed to make such commercial harvest financially viable. The present and projected future rate of climate change, in particular, has implications for such sustainability. Information now available on woodland responses to climate changes occurring over the past 30,000 years is used to estimate what the responses to future climate change might be. Two important sources of information needed for this estimation of future woodland changes that are focused on here are first, are there possible relationships between the recent woodland expansion and associated climate change? Second, how are the differences in the strategies by which pinyon and juniper have responded to past climate changes, and how the different strategies are apparently related to differences in the genetic makeup of the species, likely to affect future woodland responses.
Climate Change, Genetic Variability, and Associated Great Basin Woodland Dynamics: Implications for Long-Term Biomass Production
Logan, UT
The last 150 years has seen major increases in the spatial extent and in the biomass levels of all Great Basin woodlands. This has generated interest in using these woodlands for biomass harvest. Important to the success of such utilization is the long-term stability in the available biomass needed to make such commercial harvest financially viable. The present and projected future rate of climate change, in particular, has implications for such sustainability. Information now available on woodland responses to climate changes occurring over the past 30,000 years is used to estimate what the responses to future climate change might be. Two important sources of information needed for this estimation of future woodland changes that are focused on here are first, are there possible relationships between the recent woodland expansion and associated climate change? Second, how are the differences in the strategies by which pinyon and juniper have responded to past climate changes, and how the different strategies are apparently related to differences in the genetic makeup of the species, likely to affect future woodland responses.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/rtw/2011/Breakout1/4
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