Summary
Over the past century, forests in the eastern United States have been growing and accumulating more large trees, providing valuable biomass storage and other ecosystem services. This trend in biomass accumulation is widely expected to continue with longer growing seasons. However, long-term studies at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Virginia suggest the opposite, biomass in this temperate deciduous forest is declining. With 15 years of data, project researchers have found that tree growth is now slowing and more trees are dying, and these changes are not explained by
