Plant Physiology, Forest Ecology, and Carbon Cycle Uncertainty in a Changing Climate

Name: Plant Physiology, Forest Ecology, and Carbon Cycle Uncertainty in a Changing Climate
Start: 2026-03-02T09:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-03-02T10:00:00-05:00

Prof. Anna Trugman

University of California, Santa Barbara

Monday March 2, 2026, 2 PM ET

Abstract:

Widespread tree mortality following disturbances such as droughts, fire, and pest and pathogen outbreaks has emerged as an environmentally and economically devastating ‘ecological surprise’. Increases in disturbance-driven tree mortality with further climate change has the potential to massively disrupt terrestrial ecosystem productivity and biodiversity, causing Earth’s forests to release carbon into the atmosphere. In this talk, I examine potential biodiversity and carbon impacts of climate change on forests in the continental United States through a fusion of historical and future climate projections, plant physiological measurements, large observational databases, and trait-based ecosystem models. First, I combine forest inventory measurements and plant physiological models to understanding the extent to which drought disturbance may drive biogeographic shifts in species composition. Importantly, observed turnovers are not keeping pace with the required compositional shifts to mitigate increases in drought stress. Next, I conduct a multi-method synthesis of contiguous US forest carbon storage potential through a fusion of forest inventory plots, machine learning/niche models, and mechanistic land surface model outputs. Across contrasting approaches, there are diverging signs and magnitudes of projected future forest carbon storage potential. Collectively, these results highlight physiological and ecological unknowns governing uncertainty in forest responses to future climate change.

Biosketch:

Anna Trugman is an ecologist with a multidisciplinary background in the earth sciences. Her research interests are centered around understanding the Earth system consequences of plant physiological processes and ecological interactions, particularly in water limited systems and novel climate conditions expected with anthropogenic climate change. Anna received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in Geological and Environmental Sciences, her Ph.D. from Princeton University in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and spent two years at the University of Utah in the Biology Department. She has been a Professor in the Department of Geography at UC Santa Barbara since 2019.