The USDI/USGS Climate Effects Network Offers Grant for Yukon River Basin Forest Carbon and Growth Studies

The YRB Project is seeking a recipient that has ongoing research interests and demonstrated capabilities in the development and analysis of ground-based forest measurements and data sets that can be linked to carbon cycle studies, remote sensing change detection/verification, and other climate change effects investigations and seeking a recipient that has ongoing research interests and demonstrated capabilities in the collection and analysis of tree ring and other tree growth measurements of all the major species contributing to carbon uptake and storage in the boreal forest of the Alaska YRB, including the non-commercial species black spruce and the broadleaf tree species Alaska birch and aspen. Research interests and history should be at large regional spatial scales to facilitate comparisons with satellite-derived NDVI data sets. YRB interests include updating of legacy tree-ring data sets to reflect the effects of recent Alaska climate anomalies, adequate time depth (200+ yrs perspective) to place recent forest changes into context, and investigations of mechanisms of climate influence on tree growth using techniques such as stable isotope analysis. The recipient will work with USGS and other investigators to interpret and provide landscape context for ongoing YRB plot-based results, calibrate temperature and other climate influences on tree growth/carbon uptake, and apply scenario data of plausible future climates to project likely changes.

Once completed, the forest growth and monitoring data sets will be critical to scientists, resource managers, and policy makers involved in management activities and investigations at a variety of spatial scales. It is anticipated that these data sets will be useful for site-specific, regional, and boreal forest-wide assessments of the degree to which tree growth/carbon uptake and forest tree survival are influenced by evolving climate change. In addition, the calibration and validation results and models will facilitate predictions about the anticipated changes to forests and other ecosystems stemming from projected climate change scenarios, including differences due to forest management techniques.