Dr Rebecca Snell, assistant professor of Environmental and plant biology at Ohio University, will build a new way to predict how forests might respond to climate change, filling large gaps in scientists’ methods and knowledge, thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) designed for potentially transformative research.

His study will bridge the gap between empirical studies where researchers observe seed production and modeling studies which typically begin with established saplings.

“Tree reproduction and recruitment (the process by which new trees are added to a forest) are critical processes in forest dynamics and are likely to play an important role in the ability of forests to respond to climate change”, Snell said. “However, our understanding of these early stages of life remains uncertain.

Snell’s project will create a “dynamic vegetation model (DVM)” that encompasses studies of tree recruitment and models of forest growth. It will build on an existing model and then test it against observed results over time. Then the dynamic model can be used to simulate the future of a forest to see how it might react to conditions such as a warmer, drier climate.

The NSF Early-Concept Grant for Frontier Research (EAGER) is designed to support early stage exploratory work on potentially transformative research ideas or approaches. Snells’ grant, “EAGER: Quantifying the relative importance of reproduction in forest dynamics underhistoric and future climate change,” provides $ 194,085 for two years of study.

“Current modeling studies generally assume that recruitment is not limited by seed supply or seedling establishment and simulate recruitment directly from saplings,” said Snell. “But most DVMs don’t include a direct link between weather and reproduction. This is a critical weakness of these models, as the ability of forests to respond to current and future climate changes ultimately depends on tree reproduction and recruitment. “

Snell goes on to say that an updated DVM can simulate the impacts of climate change on multiple processes, with multiple species, using species-specific relationships for growth, mortality, and reproduction.

“This is a necessary step to more accurately predict species turnover and composition in the future, and to quantify the role of reproduction in forest dynamics,” she said.

Snell will focus his study on the Pacific Northwest, where declining summer and fall precipitation has increased water deficits over the past 40 years. His model will compare simulated forests with empirical forest data from the national forest inventory and analysis database, to assess the model’s ability to capture species composition and forest dynamics. Next, Snell will use simulation experiments to quantify the impact of climate change on tree growth and mortality, seedling survival, and the relationship between tree growth and reproduction.

“We may find that reproduction plays a relatively small role in forest dynamics, under historical and future climate. Regardless of the outcome, however, there is a significant earning potential. If reproduction is a critical process for the forest’s responses to climate change, then it is an important area for future research, ”she said.

Another benefit is that graduate and undergraduate students working in Snell’s lab will receive valuable training in computer programming, database management, data analysis, and science communication to various audiences.

“These skills have become essential for careers both inside and outside academia,” she says.