CHARLESTON — While Congress debates the Green New Deal, scientists and researchers at West Virginia University are looking at trees and soil to determine the effects of climate change and how West Virginia can weather the changes.

The program was part of WVU’s Academic Media Day Monday at the Erickson Alumni Center in Morgantown. Media from around the state listened and spoke to experts from WVU’s academic departments, institutes and laboratories, with one-on-one time to ask questions.

Experts with the WVU Mountain Hydrology Laboratory, the Department of Geology and Geography and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering briefed media earlier in the day on water security and resources engineering and how the rings of trees can help scientists interpret climate data.

In the afternoon, focus turned to the soil and plant life and how increases in temperature could affect West Virginia’s forests and farms.

Richard Thomas, professor and chair of the Department of Biology, gave a presentation, “The Clean Air Act and Climate Change Leave Their Fingerprints on Forest Health in West Virginia.” Last May, Thomas and doctoral candidate Justin Mathias released a study on the recovery of red spruce trees since the passage of the Clean Air Act.

According to the study, Thomas and Mathias studied the rings and carbon dioxide isotopes in red spruce tree rings at three locations within the Monongahela National Forest where trees are downwind from carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants along the Ohio River Valley. The researchers looked at trees more than 75-years old to compare differences.

“Red spruce is kind of an iconic tree species in West Virginia,” Thomas said. “It was a beautiful place to work.”

The data Thomas and Mathias found was that the red spruces started to show recovery after 1989 when pollutants in the atmosphere started to be highly regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency through the Clean Air Act. The chances for acid rain began to reduce due to technologies, such as scrubbers installed in the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants.

The ring growth was larger during periods of decreased pollutants in the atmosphere, but during the worst of the pollution, tree ring growth slowed down. For example, ring growth increased during the period of the Great Depression in the 1930s due to decreases in heavy manufacturing, but tree ring growth slowed between 1962 and 1986, when sulphur pollution was at its highest.

“We saw a decline in growth,” Thomas said. “It doesn’t mean the trees were getting smaller, but it means the growth rings were getting more tight…acid rain was devastating the forest.”

While scrubbers and use of low-sulfur coal helped diminish the threat of acid rain, it hasn’t stopped the increase of carbon dioxide. However, the red spruces have benefited from the increased carbon dioxide coupled with warmer springs.

“Climate change, at this point, is helping these trees grow better,” Thomas said. “We don’t know what will happen as that temperature continues to increase. This is a very small increase in temperature…if the temperature change continues to increase, we don’t know if that positive effect will last.”

Researchers also are finding that soil allows for greater carbon storage and how to increase that storage. Edward Brzostek, assistant professor in the Department of Biology, detailed the work of his students on soil carbon storage.

There is more carbon stored in soil than in the atmosphere or plant life combined. Microbes recycle the majority of nutrients used for plant growth. But Brzostek said it’s harder to measure carbons in soil due to complexity. Carbon remains in the soil because it’s difficult for microbes to break down and some carbon remains stuck in minerals and other material.

As the temperatures warm, the carbon can be more easily released from the soil and into the atmosphere. Due to the number of coal-fired power plants in the region, nitrogen output was increased and absorbed by the soil, which helped prevent the breakdown of carbon dioxide in the soil.

As nitrogen pollution is reduced, the amount of carbon dioxide in the soil is reduced and released into the atmosphere. Leaf litter from different species of trees are consumed by soil microbes differently, producing different amounts of carbon. As the planet warms, different species of trees benefit from the warmer, wetter weather, but might not produce litter that keeps more carbon in the soil.

Also in the afternoon, experts spoke on the climate effect on public health and how patents and intellectual property commercialization play into innovations in clean energy technology.

WVU’s Research Office focuses of energy, water stewardship, STEM education, gravitational wave astrophysics, and the state and region’s health needs. According to WVU, the university conducts 87 percent of all research in the state, totally $118 million in expenditures in 2018. More than 3,500 faculty, staff, and student are involved in research at WVU. West Virginia is one of 43 states with an R1 university.