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Inside the Forest That's Simulating Global Warming

Scientists are superheating this slice of land to see what will happen 100 years from now.

We know global warming is threatens the environment, but the specifics of the damage it will cause have yet to be fully understood. In this segment from VICE News Tonight, scientists took VICE News correspondent Arielle Duhaime-Ross inside a forest where they have engineered a way to simulate global warming and track its effects.

At the Hubbard Brook experimental forest in Grafton County, New Hampshire, researchers buried over two miles of heated cables just four inches below the surface of the ground to heat up the forest and study the potential impact of global warming.

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The Climate Change Across Seasons Experiment (CCASE) manipulates the climate across a year to see how the forest responds, as Boston University biology professor Pamela Templer said. Since 2012, she's heated over 6,000 square feet of deciduous forest for experimentation purposes.

The heated cables at the Hubbard Brook experimental forest give researchers an idea of what the climate and the environmental response will be like 100 years from now, when scientists predict global temperatures could rise up to 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Higher temperatures may have unprecedented effects on the forest's ability to absorb and retain elements like nitrogen and carbon, said Templer.

It turns out that in Hubbard Brook experimental forest, the trees don't filter as much carbon dioxide and nitrogen as they should. Meanwhile, less winter snowpack actually leads to cooler winter temperatures, said Templer, which in turn disrupt tree roots, keeping them from absorbing nitrogen from the soil. That nitrogen then flows into local waterways, threatening them with toxic levels that may be dangerous for humans to drink.

Templer hopes that experiments like CCASE will contribute hard data and support more climate modeling in the future. Global warming changes not only temperatures and snowmelt, but also has a domino effect on soil sustainability, drinking water, and the health of plants and other organisms in the ecosystem.

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