Environmental drivers interactively affect individual tree growth across temperate European forests

Abstract

Forecasting the growth of tree species to future environmental changes requires a better understanding of its determinants. Tree growth is known to respond to global‐change drivers such as climate change or atmospheric deposition, as well as to local land‐use drivers such as forest management. Yet, large geographical scale studies examining interactive growth responses to multiple global‐change drivers are relatively scarce and rarely consider management effects. Here, we assessed the interactive effects of three global‐change drivers (temperature, precipitation and nitrogen deposition) on individual tree growth of three study species (Quercus robur/petraea, Fagus sylvatica and Fraxinus excelsior). We sampled trees along spatial environmental gradients across Europe and accounted for the effects of management for Quercus. We collected increment cores from 267 trees distributed over 151 plots in 19 forest regions and characterized their neighbouring environment to take into account potentially confounding factors such as tree size, competition, soil conditions and elevation. We demonstrate that growth responds interactively to global‐change drivers, with species‐specific sensitivities to the combined factors. Simultaneously high levels of precipitation and deposition benefited Fraxinus, but negatively affected Quercus’ growth, highlighting species‐specific interactive tree growth responses to combined drivers. For Fagus, a stronger growth response to higher temperatures was found when precipitation was also higher, illustrating the potential negative effects of drought stress under warming for this species. Furthermore, we show that past forest management can modulate the effects of changing temperatures on Quercus’ growth; individuals in plots with a coppicing history showed stronger growth responses to higher temperatures. Overall, our findings highlight how tree growth can be interactively determined by global‐change drivers, and how these growth responses might be modulated by past forest management. By showing future growth changes for scenarios of environmental change, we stress the importance of considering multiple drivers, including past management and their interactions, when predicting tree growth.

Thorny Shrubs Limit the Browsing Pressure of Large Herbivores on Tree Regeneration in Temperate Lowland Forested Landscapes

“…1 Plot elevation (Elevation), 2 hawthorn composition (Comp hawt), 3 wild rose composition (Comp rose), 4 blackthorn composition (Comp black), 5 heights of shrubs (Hh), 6 shrub cover (Cover), 7 distance from seed source (DistTree), 8 number of observations (No obs). 1 Plot elevation (Elevation), 2 hawthorn composition (Comp hawt), 3 wild rose composition (Comp rose), 4 blackthorn composition (Comp black), 5 heights of shrubs (Hh), 6 shrub cover (Cover), 7 distance from seed source (DistTree), 8 number of observations (No obs).…”

“…All regression models were estimated with robust standard errors. 1 Plot elevation (Elevation), 2 hawthorn composition (Comp hawt), 3 wild rose composition (Comp rose), 4 blackthorn composition (Comp black), 5 heights of shrubs (Hh), 6 shrub cover (Cover), 7 distance from seed source (DistTree), 8 number of observations (No obs). Significance level is p < 0.1, ** significance level is p < 0.05, *** significance level is p < 0.01.…”

“…As reforestation and forest restoration grow in importance in Europe and around the world [1], the debate concerning the appropriate reference points and ecological conditions continues to evolve [2,3]. The development of the landscape matrix in the European temperate zone after the last Ice Age [4] was thought to have been dominated by forested landscapes [5].…”

Non-Destructive Evaluation Techniques and What They Tell Us about Wood Property Variation

“…Research at UGent-Woodlab has focused on utilizing μCT scanning for high-throughput scanning of increment cores [278,279]. The technique has been used for inter-annual [280][281][282] and intra-annual [283,284] tree growth studies. An example of a μCT scanner at the UGCT (UGent Centre for X-ray Tomography, www.ugct.ugent.be) is shown in Figure 17, and a cross-section scan through an increment core of oak is illustrated in Figure 18.…”

Effects of rising atmospheric CO2, climate change, and nitrogen deposition on aboveground net primary production in a temperate forest

“…Altered precipitation regimes such as increased drought stress will decrease tree growth and even trigger tree mortality under severe water limited conditions (Ibáñez et al 2018). Elevated N deposition is almost likely to increase tree growth, thus leading to higher C accumulation given that N is often the limiting nutrient in many forest ecosystems (Feng et al 2015, Maes et al 2019. However, the fertilization effects of elevated N deposition on tree growth are expected to saturate or even likely to decline with continuous N enrichment because of nonlinear responses of tree growth to accumulated N deposition (Tian et al 2016).…”