Dr. Sarah Germain

Responsible harvesting and other small disturbances can help make forests in the eastern United States more resilient to climate change, according to research by a new University of Wyoming faculty member… Forests of the eastern United States are important carbon storehouses. They remove carbon emissions from the air, packing them away into leaves, trunks, roots and soils. Eastern forests are responsible for 85 percent of all of the carbon taken up by U.S. forests. And the forests support biodiversity, timber products and other ecosystem services at the same time. But Eastern trees are becoming increasingly stressed by warming temperatures, which can slow their growth and reproduction. “It was comforting to learn that Eastern forests, which hold the most carbon in the U.S., are actually doing OK,” Germain says. “With moderate, status quo levels of disturbance, Eastern forests have the capacity to remain an important carbon sink.”