The demographic rates of tree species typically show large spatial variation across their range. Understanding the environmental factors underlying this variation is a key topic in forest ecology, with far-reaching management implications. Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) covers large areas of the Northern Hemisphere, the Iberian Peninsula being its southwestern distribution limit. In recent decades, an increase in severe droughts and a densification of forests as a result of changes in forest uses have occurred in this region. Our aim was to use climate and stand structure data to explain mortality and growth patterns of Scots pine forests across the Iberian Peninsula. We used data from 2392 plots dominated by Scots pine, sampled for the National Forest Inventory of Spain. Plots were sampled from 1986 to 1996 (IFN2) and were resampled from 1997 to 2007 (IFN3), allowing for the calculation of growth and mortality rates. We fitted linear models to assess the response of growth and mortality rates to the spatial variability of climate, climatic anomalies, and forest structure. Over the period of approximately 10 years between the IFN2 and IFN3, the amount of standing dead trees increased 11-fold. Higher mortality rates were related to dryness, and growth was reduced with increasing dryness and temperature, but results also suggested that effects of climatic stressors were not restricted to dry sites only. Forest structure was strongly related to demographic rates, suggesting that stand development and competition are the main factors associated with demography. In the case of mortality, forest structure interacted with climate, suggesting that competition for water resources induces tree mortality in dry sites. A slight negative relationship was found between mortality and growth, indicating that both rates are likely to be affected by the same stress factors. Additionally, regeneration tended to be lower in plots with higher mortality. Taken together, our results suggest a large-scale self-thinning related to the recent densification of Scots pine forests. This process appears to be enhanced by dry conditions and may lead to a mismatch in forest turnover. Forest management may be an essential adaptive tool under the drier conditions predicted by most climate models.

Aim Characterizing the variation of functional traits in nature is a first step towards linking environmental changes to changes in ecosystem function. Here we aim to characterize the spatial variability of major plant functional traits along wide environmental gradients in Mediterranean and temperate forests, and assess to what extent this variability differs between two dominant families in Northern Hemisphere forests: Fagaceae and Pinaceae. Location Catalonia (north‐east Iberian Peninsula). Methods Four functional traits were selected to incorporate information on both the leaf and the wood economic spectra: maximum tree height (Hmax), wood density (WD), leaf mass per area (LMA) and nitrogen content of leaves (Nmass). We quantified the variance distribution of each functional trait across three nested ecological scales: population, species and family. Through such scales, we explored the spatial variation of functional traits through climatic and biotic gradients, as well as the covariation among traits. Results Functional trait variability was distributed across all the ecological scales considered, but mostly at the family level, with functional traits differing markedly between Fagaceae and Pinaceae. Within families, variation in functional traits was similar or higher within species than between species. The spatial variability in functional traits was related to biotic and abiotic gradients, although this effect was quantitatively small compared with differences between families. Covariation among functional traits was not necessarily conserved across ecological scales. Trait covariation across all species was structured along the Hmax−WD and LMA−Nmass axes, but this structure was partially lost within families, where variation was mostly structured along the Hmax−LMA and WD−Nmass axes. Main conclusions Intraspecific variation emerges as a fundamental component of functional trait structure along wide environmental gradients. Understanding the sources of intraspecific variation, as well as how it contributes to community assembly and ecosystem functioning, thus becomes a primary research question.

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