Effects of global warming on trees and understorey plants at Swedish IM sites - a tentative approach

• Aim

  Prediction of understorey vegetation change on former and current IM intensive plots in Sweden

• Assumptions

  • Atmospheric CO₂ is doubled and warming effects (global temp. plus 2 to 4 °C) follow according to four General Circulation Models (GCM).
  • Forest tree distributions change according to Sykes & Prentice (1995, 1996)
  • Continued protection of the sites from management
  • No barriers to the migration of plants
  • Climate stabilized for at least 1000 years!

• Methods

  Correlation of present species abundance with environmental factors to predict the species' future abundance and distribution using forward stepwise regression

• Expected results

  • Great changes in the southern half of the country and in the mountains
  • Little change on some northern plots
  • New species will enter the sites from the south