Tree diversity mitigates defoliation after a drought‐induced tipping point

Understanding the processes that underlie drought‐related tree vitality loss is essential for anticipating future forest dynamics, and for developing management plans aiming at increasing the resilience of forests to climate change. Forest vitality has been continuously monitored in Europe since the...

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Veröffentlicht in:Global change biology Jg. 24; H. 9; S. 4304 - 4315
Hauptverfasser: Sousa‐Silva, Rita, Verheyen, Kris, Ponette, Quentin, Bay, Elodie, Sioen, Geert, Titeux, Hugues, Van de Peer, Thomas, Van Meerbeek, Koenraad, Muys, Bart
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: England Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.2018
Schlagworte:
acid deposition
Acid rain
Air pollution
Air pollution effects
Biodiversity
climate
Climate change
Climate effects
crown condition
Defoliation
Drought
drought stress
Dynamics
Ecosystems
Europe
forest dynamics
Forest ecosystems
forest health
Forest management
Forests
Interactions
Monitoring
Plant diversity
Plant species
Resilience
Species diversity
Species richness
trees
water stress
Europe
biodiversity
drought stress
forest management
climate change
crown condition
ISSN:1354-1013, 1365-2486, 1365-2486
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Zusammenfassung:Understanding the processes that underlie drought‐related tree vitality loss is essential for anticipating future forest dynamics, and for developing management plans aiming at increasing the resilience of forests to climate change. Forest vitality has been continuously monitored in Europe since the acid rain alert in the 1980s, and the intensive monitoring plots of ICP Forests offer the opportunity to investigate the effects of air pollution and climate change on forest condition. By making use of over 100 long‐term monitoring plots, where crown defoliation has been assessed extensively since 1990, we discovered a progressive shift from a negative to a positive effect of species richness on forest health. The observed tipping point in the balance of net interactions, from competition to facilitation, has never been reported from real ecosystems outside experimental conditions; and the strong temporal consistency of our observations with increasing drought stress emphasizes its climate change relevance. Furthermore, we show that higher species diversity has reduced the severity of defoliation in the long term. Our results confirm the greater resilience of diverse forests to future climate change‐induced stress. More generally, they add to an accumulating body of evidence on the large potential of tree species mixtures to face manifold disturbances in a changing world. Annual trends in plot‐averaged defoliation of trees along a tree species richness gradient in temperate deciduous forests.
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ISSN:1354-1013
1365-2486
1365-2486
DOI:10.1111/gcb.14326