Projecting Future Conditions: What will forests be like in the future?
The future condition of northern forests will depend on many variables. It is impossible to consider every possible future, and so NFFP efforts focus on developing projections from a set of possible future scenarios. Projecting future forest composition and structure under a range of scenarios provides a better basis for judging whether management plans are reasonable and sustainable.
Forest area is projected to decrease between 3.5 and 6.4 percent with losses concentrated around existing urban and suburban areas.
Projected forest removals resulting from land-use changes are likely to average about 13 percent of total removals, with the remainder resulting from harvesting; in some populous Eastern States, removals resulting from land-use changes could exceed 50 percent of all removals.
By 2050, urban land is expected to increase to about 8 percent in the conterminous United States and to 14 percent in the North.
One purpose of the Northern Forest Futures Project is to predict change in future forest attributes across the 20 States in the U.S. North for the period that extends from 2010 to 2060. There are six scenarios, each representing a global greenhouse storyline (IPCC 2007) paired with a harvest regime:
A1B: high economic growth, moderate population growth
A2: moderate economic growth, high population growth
B2: low economic growth, low population growth
-C: Scenario projections assume harvest will continue at recently observed levels
-BIO: Harvest will increase to reflect increased harvest for bioenergy production
Future Conditions Data
In addition to the Criteria and Indicators, you can view a variety of statistics.