From canopy to seed: Loss of snow drives directional changes in forest composition.

Climate change is altering the conditions for tree recruitment, growth, and survival, and impacting forest community composition. Across southeast Alaska, USA, and British Columbia, Canada, (Alaska yellow-cedar) is experiencing extensive climate change-induced canopy mortality due to fine-root death during soil freezing events following warmer winters and the loss of insulating snowpack. Here, we examine the effects of ongoing, climate-driven canopy mortality on forest community composition and identify potential shifts in stand trajectories due to the loss of a single canopy species.

A foundation of ecology rediscovered: 100 years of succession on the William S. Cooper plots in Glacier Bay, Alaska.

Understanding plant community succession is one of the original pursuits of ecology, forming some of the earliest theoretical frameworks in the field. Much of this was built on the long-term research of William S. Cooper, who established a permanent plot network in Glacier Bay, Alaska, in 1916.

Emerging climate-driven disturbance processes: widespread mortality associated with snow-to-rain transitions across 10° of latitude and half the range of a climate-threatened conifer.

Climate change is causing rapid changes to forest disturbance regimes worldwide. While the consequences of climate change for existing disturbance processes, like fires, are relatively well studied, emerging drivers of disturbance such as snow loss and subsequent mortality are much less documented. As the climate warms, a transition from winter snow to rain in high latitudes will cause significant changes in environmental conditions such as soil temperatures, historically buffered by snow cover.