Warming climate driving fundamental shifts in Boreal forests: Study

By Himanshu Nitnaware
Down to Earth.org
January 21, 2025
Category: Forestry
Region: International

Nearly half of the global boreal forests — spanning Canada, Alaska and Siberia — are undergoing major transitions due to climate change, making them increasingly vulnerable to forest fires and altering their role as a key carbon sink, a new study has revealed.  These forests are vast and found in the cold, northern regions. However, they are warming four times faster than the global average and are expected to shift into a new ecological regime. This transformation could impact global climate regulation by triggering biome shifts and changes in tree cover dynamics, according to the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)… It suggested that the boreal biome shifting to an open state indicates that its current distribution is unstable and temporary.

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