PARENT SESSION
Symposium 1: The boreal forest and global change
Organized by: EA Johnson, K Miyanishi, and K Ruckstuhl
Monday, August 8, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 517 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Predictions of climate and vegetation change in the boreal region.
Thonicke, Kirsten1, Prentice, I. Colin2, 1 School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom2 QUEST,University of Bristol, Wills Memorial Building, Queen's Road, Bristol, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT- Recent studies showed the sensitivity of the boreal region to ongoing climate change. It is hypothesized to be the vegetation zone with most of the global warming to happen. Fire as one of the dominant disturbance agent in the boreal zone burns millions of hectares of forest each year - with impacts on vegetation dynamics, landscape diversity, forest management and the global carbon cycle. The implications of possible future climate change on vegetation and associated fire regimes are thus of high interest. The range of future changes in fire regimes, vegetation dynamics and biome distribution will be analysed by applying actual IPCC scenarios to the dynamic global vegetation model LPJ with its embedded fire model Reg-FIRM. Implications of possible changes for the boreal zone will be discussed.
Key words: climate change, fire disturbance, carbon cycle, dynamic global vegetation model