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Updated: Sep 23, 2025

Simulating Impacts of Ice Storms on Forest Ecosystems

Simulating Impacts of Ice Storms on Forest Ecosystems

Published on: June 30, 2020

Future climate risks from stress, insects and fire across US forests.

William R L Anderegg¹, Oriana S Chegwidden², Grayson Badgley^3,4

¹School of Biological Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

Ecology Letters

|May 13, 2022

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Climate change significantly increases wildfire and tree mortality risks in US forests, threatening their role as carbon sinks. Future projections show these disturbances escalating, impacting forest carbon storage and climate mitigation efforts.

Keywords:

biotic agents carbon cycle disturbance drought nature-based climate solutions

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Area of Science:

Forest Ecology
Climate Change Science
Carbon Sequestration

Background:

Forests are critical global carbon sinks, essential for climate change mitigation through carbon storage.
Current climate change mitigation strategies rely on the long-term stability of forest carbon stores.
Climate-driven disturbances like wildfires and tree mortality pose significant risks to this stability.

Discussion:

This study quantifies climate drivers of wildfire and tree mortality (climate stress and insect-driven) in the contiguous US.
It projects future disturbance risks under various emissions scenarios throughout the 21st century.
Results reveal widespread current risks, projected to increase substantially, particularly fire risk by over fourfold.

Key Insights:

Current forest disturbance risks are widespread across the US.
Future risks are projected to increase significantly, with fire risk escalating by more than 4x and climate-stress mortality by over 1.3x.
These findings underscore the pervasive impact of climate-sensitive disturbances on US forests.

Outlook:

The study provides US-wide risk maps for key climate-sensitive disturbances.
These maps can enhance carbon cycle modeling and inform conservation strategies.
Results raise critical questions about the risk management within forest carbon offset policies and future climate policy.