After much debate, a new study has shown that the forest composition in the Eastern United States is not affected by climate change. According to a report by University Herald, this study comes from research compiled from studying a wide variety of forests. The study was published in Global Change Biology and was headed by Penn State University professor Marc Abrams and scientist Gregory Nowacki.

There are many reasons why eastern forests have experienced composition changes over the years, but the biggest culprit may have been large amounts of cutting and burning that took place towards the end of the Nineteenth Century. Scientists say that these events have had a lasting effect on the forests, and could be the leading cause behind the current composition. Studies state that this burning has left the forests in a state of “disequilibrium” from which they are still recovering.

The research was compiled by studying modern and ancient vegetation in the eastern forested areas. However, one of the tricky things about vegetation is that there are so many factors that effect elements within a certain area. As such, it is hard to sort out what effects have taken place during the modern era. However, scientists solved this by compiling different data on tree species and split them into shade tolerance, temperature and pyrogenicity classes. They then took this data and compared them against comparative tree-census date, which gave them the proper results.

The changes in composition to eastern forests first began in the 1930’s. A date that happens to coincide with the start of forest fire prevention. Fire suppression is another reason for the disequilibrium seen in current vegetation, and forests that were formed during a time of great disturbance are more likely to see lasting effects. As a result, while climate change has had an impact on composition, land-use trumps any effects the climate change might of had.