Journal of Fundamentals of Renewable Energy and Applications
Open Access
ISSN: 2090-4541
ISSN: 2090-4541
Carlos A Gonzalez-Benecke, Robert O Teskey, Heather Aldridge and T A Martin
Oregon State University, USA
University of Georgia, USA
State Climate Office of North Carolina, USA
University of Florida, USA
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Fundam Renewable Energy Appl
The 3-PG model was used to predict the growth under the future climate scenarios. 20 Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogues (MACA) down-scaled the climatic simulations which provided the climate data to run the 3-PG model for 36 loblolly pine plantations, distributed across the range. It was previously demonstrated that this model had shown well growth at these sites under the current climatic conditions (Gonzalez-Benecke et al. 2016). We found that, biomass production generally increased under both Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios for rotations in the near future (years 2025 to 2050) as well as at the end of the century (years 2075 to 2100). However, the relative increment in aboveground biomass was much greater at cooler sites (current mean temperatures between 15 and 18�?ºC) than at warmer sites in the region, i.e., the lower Coastal Plain. In addition, the response to the predicted future climates varied with the site quality. Plantations with a high Site Index (>25m at age 25) showed very little change in the productivity relative to the current baseline climate, and in some cases (warmest sites) it exhibited a slight decrease in the productivity. This pattern was more pronounced in the RCP 4.5 simulations than those for RCP 8.5, probably due to the compensating effect on growth from the large predicted increase in the atmospheric CO2 concentration in the RCP 8.5 scenario. We conclude that, cooler sites and lower quality sites will have greater relative increases in productivity in the future when compared to the warmer and higher quality sites in the region.