Vermont Forest Indicators Dashboard

Minimum Temperature

Score for 2017:
--/5
Long-Term Trend:
Scores are 
As our climate changes, it is predicted that there will be greater variability in annual temperatures, as well as warmer minimum temperatures in the winter. Failure to reach typical low winter temperatures can allow for non-native pests, pathogens, and plants to be better able to survive; further, our native trees may decline in health due to the rapidly changing climate1. More frequent free-thaw cycles can damage tree roots and can mobilize nutrients away from forests where they are needed. Here, we assess the change in annual minimum temperature in Vermont. As trees are adapted to the conditions they have experienced, deviations in minimum temperature from the long-term mean (both above and below) could be problematic to forests. Therefore, annual scores are computed as the change from the long-term mean.
1Rustad, L., Campbell, J., Dukes, J.S., Huntington, T., Lambert, K.F., Mohan, J. and Rodenhouse, N., 2012. Changing climate, changing forests: The impacts of climate change on forests of the northeastern United States and eastern Canada.
FEMC Archive Resources
Dataset: Annual Summaries of Climate Trends in Vermont