By Andy Ostmeyer

aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com

Thinned of its golden hickory and blood-red sassafras, the Ozark forest that beckons tourists every autumn could look much different to future generations.

Under one forecast, residents and visitors may see pines dominating the Ozarks’ rhythm of hill and hollow.

Under another, today’s oak-hickory forest could become more open country, evolving into savanna or even grasslands.

A third possibility is a jungly tangle of undergrowth dominated by woody vines such as honeysuckle and poison ivy choking out the next generation of trees by mid-century.

Those scenarios emerge for Ozark forestland under climate-change models. Whatever the region looks like in the future, it will be different than today, the experts agree.

“I certainly would expect forests to change,” said John Shannon, state forester with the Arkansas Forestry Commission and a technical adviser to the Arkansas Governor’s Commission on Global Warming.

The Ozarks has been forested for 35 million years, said Cindy Sagers, who teaches plant ecology and plant biology at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and who is a member of the governor’s commission. She expects a forest will survive in the region in some fashion, but it won’t be the Ozarks of today.

“What we do know is that vegetation zones are shifting,” she said, “so that things that grow in Southern Arkansas can now be planted in Northwest Arkansas.

“There is probably going to be some forest here, but whether it is pine or savanna ...”

Different models

Models put together by the National Wildlife Federation forecast temperature increases of as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit for Missouri by 2100 if global warming goes on unchecked, and that would “alter the composition of the state’s forests, with southern pines replacing oak and hickory currently prevalent in southern Missouri and the Ozarks.”

In Arkansas, the eastern portion of the state will be “overtaken by longleaf and slash pine, while the rest of the state will be dominated by savanna and woodlands ...

“Global warming could cause 40 to 60 percent of Arkansas’ forests to be replaced by grasslands as slightly warmer temperatures push trees currently suited to the state’s climate northward,” the wildlife federation concluded.