Interacting Effects of Multiple Stresses on Growth and Physiological Processes in Northern Forest Trees

Responses of forest trees to single and multiple environmental stresses from seedlings to mature plants: Past stress history, stress interactions, tolerance and acclimation

“…Analyzing the influence of stress on plant performance in the field is complicated by occurrence of multiple successive and/or simultaneous stresses, often influencing plant performance interactively, either amplifying or ameliorating the plant responses (Pell et al, 1994;Valladares and Pearcy, 1997;Isebrands et al, 2000;Alonso et al, 2001;Niinemets and Valladares, 2004;Valladares et al, 2005;Mittler, 2006;Rennenberg et al, 2006). Given that global change involves modification of a series of environmental factors concurrently and changes in the severity of different stress factors, knowledge of how plants acclimate to multiple successive or multiple combined stresses is of key significance in understanding the effects of future climates on vegetation.…”

“…Sustained deviation of any environmental condition beyond the optimum range reduces plant potential productivity, constituting a stress for the plant. Stressful conditions are part of "normal" plant life in the field, and therefore, understanding the limits of stress tolerance and acclimation to stresses is of great fundamental and practical value in predicting the potential and realized limits of plant productivity (Lichtenthaler, 1998;Isebrands et al, 2000). A key environmental limitation in forest understory is light availability, especially for developing seedlings and saplings .…”

Prediction of atmospheric δ¹³CO₂ using fossil plant tissues

“…We also noted lower average relative humidity in the RCO 2 = 3Â treatment. Together, these observations suggest reduced stomatal conductance at RCO 2 = 3Â as part of the plants' short-term acclimation to elevated pCO 2 [Knapp et al, 1996;Isebrands et al, 2000;Vu, 2005]. However, the above is speculative: We did not perform the physiological measurements needed to confirm this hypothesis.…”

“…However, many studies have highlighted individualistic responses of plants to elevated atmospheric CO 2 levels [e.g., Bazzaz and Miao, 1993;Bazzaz and Williams, 1991;Herrick and Thomas, 2001;Körner, 2000Körner, , 2004Pataki et al, 1998] and rapid acclimation of the photosynthetic mechanism to elevated CO 2 [e.g. Ainsworth and Long, 2005;Isebrands et al, 2000;Vu, 2005]. These and studies like them call into question any simple model that predicts increased terrestrial productivity from elevated CO 2 .…”

A likelihood-based time series modeling approach for application in dendrochronology to examine the growth-climate relations and forest disturbance history

“…eruptions of volcanoes, floods) and forest disturbance events (pests, diseases, fires), as well as tracking ecological processes (e.g., treeline movement) (Cook and Kairiukstis, 1990). But growth-climate relations are difficult to infer because the effects of temperature and water on annual stem growth are nonlinear, seasonal, and interact with each other as well as with forest disturbances (Isebrands et al, 2000;Lloyd, Duffy, and Mann, 2013. Moreover, climate plays an important role in the population dynamics of forest pathogens and pests, which in turn affect tree growth (Alfaro et al, 1982(Alfaro et al, , 2014Black et al, 2010;Lee et al, 2013) and further complicate inferences of growth-climate relations.…”