Forests will not be able to keep pace with the climate crisis

Forests will not be able to keep pace with the rapid changes brought about by the current climate crisis , according to a study published in the journal Science and led by Syracuse University. The study shows that trees need at least 100-200 years to shift their populations in response to temperature changes . According to the researchers, greater human intervention may therefore be needed: assisted migration , which involves planting trees from warmer climates in traditionally colder places, could be an effective tool to help these ecosystems.

Forests are capable of adapting to climate change, moving southward in colder temperatures or northward in warmer temperatures. But ongoing global warming is exceeding their adaptation timeframe, which takes centuries.

"There's a disconnect between the pace at which forests change naturally and what's happening today with climate change," says David Fastovich, the study's lead author. "Population-level changes won't be rapid enough to preserve the forests we care about."

The researchers were able to estimate these timescales by examining pollen data from lake sediment cores, which allowed them to trace back as far as 600,000 years ago .

"With this new technique," Fastovich comments, "we can understand how dispersal and demographic changes interact and how they cause a forest to change over decades and centuries, and even on longer time scales: this had never been done before."