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Forecasting Ecological and Landscape Change

Ecological forecasts predict the effects of biologic, chemical, physical, and human-induced changes on ecosystem processes. Forecasts can include formal predictive modeling of ecosystem biogeochemistry or informal interactions such as those between scientists and public land managers. For computer based modeling, project members and collaborators interact with a number of research groups including Colorado State University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Arizona and other institutions to develop and use physical and biogeochemical models to understand Southwestern landscape processes. Project members routinely interact with public land management agencies to provide sound, objective scientific information in the service of the Department of the Interior. For some of these projects see the public lands page of this website.

One example below (figure 1) shows biosphere-atmosphere carbon exchange following land clearing and simulated wildfire during 20th and 21st century. (From Prof. Jason Neff, project collaborator, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder.)

Figure 1: Century model simulations of Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE) assuming clear cutting of a Colorado forest in the early 20th century. The four scenarios include a catastrophic wildfire in 2001 (Burn) and a range of forest management scenarios including fire suppression (full suppression), clear cutting (clear cut), and forest thinning (thinning). Panel A shows a simulation with historical climate (no climate trend in the 21st century). Panel B shows a Canadian Climate Model warming scenario (panel B). Positive values show carbon release and negative values show net carbon uptake from the atmosphere.