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Frank Thompson

The impacts of climate change and forest pests and diseases are making it harder for natural resource managers to sustain important forest habitat for wildlife species and, more generally, sustain the benefits that we all derive from forest ecosystems. The natural resource management and research communities have a general understanding of what broad climate adaptation strategies may to best to navigate these mounting challenges. But what we don’t yet fully understand is how effective implementation of these broad strategies actually is, in particular forest types and in particular places. Plus, the research community needs to better understand what knowledge and tools managers need to resolve remaining uncertainties...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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Changes in Forested Landscapes of the Northeastern U.S. Under Future Climate Scenarios
Forests in the eastern United States are changing in response to ecological succession, tree harvest, and other disturbances and climate change has the potential to further change these forests. We predicted the distribution and abundance of common tree species across portions of the eastern U.S. under alternative climate scenarios that varied in the amount of warming by the end of the century from 1.1 to 4.2 degrees celsius. We used a forest landscape change model to forecast changes in tree abundances and distribution in the North Atlantic region of the U.S. while accounting for climate change, succession, and harvest. We then considered a broader region of the U.S. and combined our results with results from previous...
This project links downscaled climate data to an ecosystem model (LINKAGES) to a landscape simulator (LANDIS) to wildlife models (HSI). Collectively, these models offer a means to assess the response of wildlife to climate change - mediated through habitat.
Linking Climate, Ecosystem, and Landscape Models to Assess Landscape Change in the Central Hardwood Bird Conservation Region
This project links downscaled climate data to an ecosystem model (LINKAGES) to a landscape simulator (LANDIS) to wildlife models (HSI). Collectively, these models offer a means to assess the response of wildlife to climate change - mediated through habitat.
Our goal is to predict the potential consequences of interactions among forest management, succession and natural disturbance, and climate change on Midwestern central hardwood landscapes and wildlife. We are working with partners that include the USDA Forest Service Eastern Region, the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science, the Gulf Plains and Ozarks LCC, the USGS Northeast Climate Science Center, and the University of Missouri. We are making predictions for scenarios that are defined by alternative forest management actions, natural disturbance regimes, and alternative climate models. We first predict changes in tree species establishment under alternative climates on Midwestern sites with the LINKAGES...
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