As an organization dedicated to preserving and restoring natural ecosystems, Wild South recognizes that climate change poses a legitimate and serious threat to forests and other habitats, especially in the Southern Appalachians. The prevailing thought among climate scientists is that worldwide temperatures are increasing and that the warming is due mainly to human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. These gases build up in the atmosphere and trap heat radiated from the earth (the “greenhouse effect”), leading to increased average temperatures on the earth’s surface.

The greenhouse effect

Higher temperatures have more varied effects than just warmer weather. For example, they lead to more frequent occurrences of extreme events like storms, droughts, and heat waves. That is why “climate change” is a more accurate term for the phenomenon than “global warming.”

Although the climate has always undergone gradual fluctuations, average yearly temperatures are higher than they have been for hundreds of years, and the rate of change is greater than it has been for millennia. Forest ecosystems have adapted to the conditions and fluctuations of the past, but the relatively rapid change happening now is throwing them dangerously out of balance.

The following are some of the challenges forests will face due to climate change:

• More droughts, forest fires, and severe storms
• Higher susceptibility to pests and disease
• Variations in the range and abundance of species
• Life cycle changes making wildlife more vulnerable
• Altered patterns of precipitation
• Loss of species habitat

Many of these threats have already started, and they will worsen as climate change continues. In order to protect forests, our society needs to mitigate climate change by reducing energy use and finding better energy sources, and forest managers need to handle unavoidable changes by adapting their management plans.