For more than 20 years forest ecologist Geoffrey Parker has
tracked the growth of 55 stands of mixed hardwood forest plots
in Maryland. The plots range in size, and some are as large as 2
acres. Parker’s research is based at the Smithsonian
Environmental Research Center, 26 miles east of the nation’s
capital. Parker’s tree censuses have revealed that the forest is
packing on weight at a much faster rate than expected. He and
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute postdoctoral fellow Sean
McMahon discovered that, on average, the forest is growing an
additional 2 tons per acre annually. That is the equivalent of a
tree with a diameter of 2 feet sprouting up over a year. Forests
and their soils store the majority of the Earth’s terrestrial
carbon stock. Small changes in their growth rate can have
significant ramifications in weather patterns, nutrient cycles,
climate change and biodiversity. Exactly how these systems will
be affected remains to be studied. Parker and McMahon’s paper
focuses on the drivers of th