st as well. It’s just taking longer to see the impact,” Fraterrigo said. “We’re seeing warmer temperatures at night across the nation and warmer winter temperatures in some places. Those two factors together could allow the insect to move slowly farther north.
“It’s difficult to anticipate how species loss will affect forest ecosystems,” she said. “Our research demonstrates that it is important to consider other drivers of global change, such as air pollution, to reveal ecosystem-level changes.”
Fraterrigo said she’d like to continue the work in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, which has also lost hemlock and has even higher rates of atmospheric nitrogen deposition. “We’re curious if we’ll see similar changes in hardwood productivity and ecosystem nitrogen retention,” she said.
Interactive effects of disturbance and nitrogen availability on phosphorus dynamics of southern Appalachian forests was published in a 2012 issue of Biogeochemistry. Impacts of hemlock loss on nitrogen retention vary with soil nitrogen availability in the southern Appalachian Mountains was published in a 2012 issue of Ecosystems. Other authors were Corinne Block, Jennifer Knoepp, and Katherine Elliott.
Partial funding was provided by federal Hatch, the USDA Forest Service, and the National Science Foundation Long-Term Ecological Research Program.
View the entire article at the ACES News site.