Last modified 11/09/2005
Birdsey, R.A.; Mickler, R.A.; Hom, J.; Heath, L.S. 2000.
Summary of prospective global change impacts on northern U.S. forest ecosystems. P. 543-568. In: Mickler, R.A., R.A. Birdsey, and J. Hom, eds. Responses of northern U.S. forests to environmental change.
Ecological Studies Series 139 Springer-Verlag, New York. 578 p.
In January, 1989, the President’s Fiscal Year 1990 Budget to the Congress was accompanied by a report entitled, “Our Changing Planet: A U.S. Strategy for Global Change Research” (Committee on Earth Sciences, 1989). The report focused the attention of policy makers on the significant environmental issues arising from natural and human-induced changes in the global Earth system. The report announced the beginning of a research program, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, with a mission to improve our understanding of the causes, processes, and consequences of the changes affecting our planet. Interest in global change was heightened in 1990 with the publication of “Climate change: The IPCC Scientific Assessment” (Houghton et al., 1990) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), jointly sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programed. This assessment was updated and new technical issues were added in the second assessment volumes, “Climate Change 1995: Impacts, Adaptations, and Mitigation of Climate Change” (Watson et al., 1996). The first IPCC assessment in 1990 and subsequent assessments have concluded that continued accumulation of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will lead to climate change whose rate and magnitude are likely to have important impacts on natural and human systems. Concurrent with these reports, several scientific literature reviews and research summaries by Eamus and Jarvis (1989), Bazzaz (1990), Musselman and Fox (1991), Strain and Thomas (1992), Rogers and Runion (1994), Gunderson and Wullschleger (1994), Ceulemans and Mousseau (1994), Idso and Idso (1994), Curtis (1996), and Mickler and Fox (1998) have quantified the direct effects of rising carbon dioxide (CO2) on plant growth and development. Unlike the statements made with scientific certainty in the 1970’s which heralded the beginning of the Waldsterben or “forest decline” in Germany, Europe, and the U.S. but concluded with the uncertainty associated with characterizing the effects of multiple stressors on forest ecosystems, predictions of global change and its effects began in the 1980’s by acknowledging many uncertainties. Today, scientific assessments of climate change are characterized by ever increasing scientific understanding and improved predictive capabilities.
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