Current climate models and projections may be inaccurate because measurements are based on guidelines that do not include the effects of trees on the local climate, according to agroforestry experts from the  World Agroforestry Centre in the new book, "How people and trees can co-adapt to climate change."

A new assessment of the impact that climate change will have in New York State is detailed in a 600-page report, commissioned by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. Fir and spruce trees are expected to die out in the Catskills, and New York City's backup drinking water supply may well be contaminated as a result of seawater making its way farther up the Hudson River, among other scenarios.

A recent report provides new ideas surrounding carbon and energy benefits forests and forest products provide. The report, Managing Forests Because Carbon Matters: Integrating Energy, Products, and Land Management Policy, summarizes and analyzes the most recent science regarding forests and carbon accounting, biomass use, and forest carbon offsets (PDF). A team of researchers from the U.S. Forest Service, several universities, and natural resource and environmental organizations coauthored the report, which appears as a supplement to the October/November 2011 issue of the Society of American Forester's Journal of Forestry.

Findings from a Duke University-led study of U.S. forests show "a lack of evidence for climate-mediated migration, and should increase concern for the risks posed by climate change." Nearly 59 percent of the species examined in the study showed signs that their geographic ranges are contracting from both the north and south. Fewer species -- only about 21 percent -- appeared to be shifting northward than predicted, the researchers said.

Experts are scrambling to understand how forest losses from insects, wildfire and droughts might affect climate and the future habitability of the Earth. Scientists have found that forests have been absorbing more than a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people are putting into the air by burning fossil fuels and other activities. There is increasing worry that if forests were to die on a sufficient scale, they would not only stop absorbing carbon dioxide, they might also start to burn up or decay at such a rate that they would spew huge amounts of the gas back into the air — as is already happening in some regions.