The impacts of climate change and disturbance on spatio‐temporal trajectories of biodiversity in a temperate forest landscape

Abstract

Summary1. The ongoing changes to climate challenge the conservation of forest biodiversity. Yet, in thermally limited systems, such as temperate forests, not all species groups might be affected negatively. Furthermore, simultaneous changes in the disturbance regime have the potential to mitigate climate-related impacts on forest species. Here, we (i) investigated the potential long-term effect of climate change on biodiversity in a mountain forest landscape, (ii) assessed the effects of different disturbance frequencies, severities and sizes and (iii) identified biodiversity hotspots at the landscape scale to facilitate conservation management.2. We employed the model iLand to dynamically simulate the tree vegetation on 13 865 ha of the Kalkalpen National Park in Austria over 1000 years, and investigated 36 unique combinations of different disturbance and climate scenarios. We used simulated changes in tree cover and composition as well as projected temperature and precipitation to predict changes in the diversity of Araneae, Carabidae, ground vegetation, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera, Mollusca, saproxylic beetles, Symphyta and Syrphidae, using empirical response functions.3. Our findings revealed widely varying responses of biodiversity indicators to climate change. Five indicators showed overall negative effects, with Carabidae, saproxylic beetles and tree species diversity projected to decrease by more than 33%. Six indicators responded positively to climate change, with Hymenoptera, Mollusca and Syrphidae diversity projected to increase more than twofold.4. Disturbances were generally beneficial for the studied indicators of biodiversity. Our results indicated that increasing disturbance frequency and severity have a positive effect on biodiversity, while increasing disturbance size has a moderately negative effect. Spatial hotspots of biodiversity were currently found in low- to mid-elevation areas of the mountainous study landscape, but shifted to higher-elevation zones under changing climate conditions.5. Synthesis and applications. Our results highlight that intensifying disturbance regimes may alleviate some of the impacts of climate change on forest biodiversity. However, the projected shift in biodiversity hotspots is a challenge for static conservation areas. In this regard, overlapping hotspots under current and expected future conditions highlight priority areas for robust conservation management.

Forest Insects and Climate Change

“…The direction of the effect of climate change can vary from positive to negative and it is often difficult to disentangle indirect and direct effects, as well as tri-trophic interactions. Predictions based on the link between climate change and insect disturbances are important, as insects are critical to forest succession [5,149]. Modeling is a useful tool, although predictions can be misleading when input data are scarce or not appropriate.…”

The impact of future forest dynamics on climate: interactive effects of changing vegetation and disturbance regimes

“…, Thom et al. ). For the specific context of the current study area, we successfully evaluated the model's capability to reproduce observed tree productivity, sensitivity to interannual climate variation, and potential natural vegetation composition at the landscape scale (see Thom et al.…”

Trade‐offs between temporal stability and level of forest ecosystem services provisioning under climate change

“…iLand has been successfully applied and evaluated for temperate forest landscapes in North America (Seidl et al 2012a(Seidl et al , b, 2014b, and Europe (Seidl et al 2014a, Thom et al 2017c, L. Dobor, T. Hl asny, W. Rammer, I. Barka, J. Trombik, P. Pavlenda, V.…”