Efficiency in the forest
Spurred by increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, forests over the past two decades have become dramatically more efficient in how they use water, a Harvard study has found. Studies had long predicted that plants would begin to use water more efficiently as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rose. But a team led by research associate Trevor Keenan and Andrew Richardson, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, has found that forests around the world are becoming more efficient than expected. Using data collected from forests in the northeastern United States and around the world, Keenan and Richardson found greater increases in efficiency than those predicted by even the most state-of-the-art computer models. The work, which was done in collaboration with researchers from Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the U.S. Forest Service, Ohio State University, Indiana University, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, is described in a July 10...