• Schantz, Jason D.
  University of Maine Graduate School
  

Global climate change will drastically alter regional climates. The influence of these changes on the distribution and relative abundance of forest trees is both critically important and subject to substantial uncertainty. It will be particularly important to understand the effects of different climate scenarios on the early life stages of major tree species, because: (1) Early life stage performance and survival strongly influence the abundance of mature trees of a given species, (2) Trees are most sensitive to environmental variation during their early life stages, and (3) Our knowledge of the response of Acadian Forest tree species to environmental variation is very limited.