IUFRO Canopy Processes Working Group Workshop in the Northeastern USA: October 6-13, 2006

Brief Description (Full Meeting Details and Call for Abstracts at http://people.bu.edu/nathan/IUFRO06announce.htm)

REGIONAL FOREST RESPONSES TO ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

How environmental change impacts forests at the regional scale is a question of intense current interest, for both fundamental and applied reasons: Regions are defined both as natural biogeographic units that exhibit some degree of coherent response to environmental change, and political units that are critical for issues like carbon accounting and water resources. The eastern United States has been estimated to be a net regional carbon sink over the last century due to changes in land cover and possibly growth enhancement caused by environmental change. However, many questions remain as to the magnitudes and causes of regional forest change in this region and other regions of the globe, because of complexity of scaling the structure, function, and environmental response of forests from leaves to landscapes. To assess the state of knowledge of regional forest responses to global change, we propose a traveling workshop to introduce researchers and students to the breadth of research and the regional characteristics of forests in the northeastern USA. The workshop will be focused on assessing the state of knowledge of the tools and experimentation needed to predict regional responses of forests to global and regional environmental change. Another goal of the workshop is to foster relationships between researchers in the field, and especially between students and established researchers.

Field sites:

Bartlett Experimental Forest New Hampshire (http://www.fs.fed.us/ne/durham/4155/bartlett.htm)

Black Rock Forest, Newburgh, New York (http://www.blackrockforest.org/)

Harvard Forest, Massachusetts (http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/)

Dates: October 6-13, 2006

Location: Traveling workshop: We propose to visit and discuss research in a circuit beginning at Durham, New Hampshire, through Bartlett Experimental Forest (White Mountains, New Hampshire), Harvard Forest (central Massachusetts), and Black Rock Forest (Hudson River Valley, New York). The meeting is scheduled to coincide with autumn leaf fall, an outstanding natural feature of this region and a visual manifestation of the link between climate and forest function. Lodging and meetings will occur at two or three of the above sites, with day trips to the other sites. Options for low cost to resort style accommodations are planned. Funding will be sought to subsidize student participation.

Participants: Researchers working across a wide range of space and time scales to understand forest response to environmental change will be invited to participate in this workshop. Specifically, this meeting should appeal to researchers studying leaf level, organismal, ecosystem, and landscape structure and processes using tools including gas exchange equipment, isotope biogeochemistry, eddy covariance, forest inventory methods, geographic information systems, and remote sensing. Scientists from both the modeling and experimental communities will be invited to participate with the goal of promoting cross-fertilization of efforts.

Meeting structure: We propose to continue the tradition of smaller, focused, workshops, mixing presentations and poster presentations with visits to field sites. We would like the meeting to be small enough (~85 people), so that participants can forge lasting relationships with other colleagues around the world. We will invite keynote presentations from promising young scientists (and perhaps a few promising students). We will also encourage contributed papers that focus on the meeting theme. We also would like to organize a few miniworkshops, focusing on measurement (for example, eddy flux, gas exchange measurements, sapflow, remote sensing, GIS), designed to get students more familiar with current techniques.

Information: Nathan Phillips, Boston University, Department of Geography and Environment. Nathan@bu.edu, http://people.bu.edu/nathan/iufro_info.htm