9652656 Urban Interactions among physical site features, biological processes, and human influences confound our ability to predict ecosystem response to environmental change. Because of these complications, correlational approaches to impact assessment may be irrelevant at the time scales required for resource management and mitigation. This study will elucidate the mechanisms of forest response to environmental constraints, and scale these responses from stands to landscapes. Field studies will be conducted for four contrasting regions: the Pacific Northwest, the Sierra Nevada, the Northeast, and the Southeast. We will explore the sensitivity of these forests to simulated changes in climate using stand- and landscape-scale models. A common modeling framework will be used across all sites to provide an explicit, structured method for assessing differences in forest response among sites. The results of this study will provide new site- and regional-scale insights into the environmental control of transient forest responses to climatic change.
