Trees can adjust to warming temps, U of M study finds

There's more time than previously thought before trees and plants go from being a climate change solution to a climate change problem, University of Minnesota scientists have discovered.

In the study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers ran a five-year experiment in northern Minnesota where they artificially warmed part of a forest. As scientists raised the temperature, researcher Peter Reich said, the trees acclimated and didn't release as much carbon as expected.

"This is good news in the sense that plants aren't radically making climate change worse, but we're still headed toward the cliff of climate change impacts," he said. "We may just be headed there more slowly than we thought."

Right now the world's trees store more carbon than they release. Previous research had shown that as temperatures warm, the release of carbon will increase and eventually contribute to climate change.

But when Reich and other U of M researchers artificially warmed part of a forest in northern Minnesota, they say the trees adjusted their respiration systems.

Still, Reich says other drivers of climate change such as burning fossil fuels continue to be a problem.

"All the other ones are still there, so this doesn't mean, 'Oh, we can relax and not worry about climate change,'" he said. "It doesn't do that at all, it's just alleviating one concern about a runaway feedback effect."

Reich is now doing a similar study in a forest in Australia.