Growing strong
When Steven Wofsy began monitoring carbon dioxide uptake at the Harvard Forest in 1991, he expected to see it slowing down or leveling off entirely as the century-old forest reached maturity. But results from his measuring devices showed carbon dioxide uptake increasing rapidly. This not only surprised Wofsy, it also raised the prospect that forests were buffering human-caused climate change more than scientists understood, suggesting a significant gap in our knowledge of how forests function. Wofsy, the Abbott Lawrence Rotch Professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Science at Harvard, and Andrew Richardson, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, spoke about their research into forests and climate change Wednesday at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH). The talk, introduced and moderated by HMNH Interim Director David Ellis, was part of the museum’s lecture series on New England forests. Trees are an important player in climate change because they consume the greenhouse gas carbon...