Potential Elevation Shift of the European Beech Stands (Fagus sylvatica L.) in Serbia

Abstract

According to climate projection models, the global temperature is expected to rise by at least 1.5°C by the end of this century. According to some studies the expected rise in Serbia is even higher. Global warming may result in creating new areas for forest growth. Although creating new forests would be a positive outcome in some areas, global warming can cause negative impacts in other areas, and this can lead to forest loss and the shift of geographical ranges, or even extinction, of plant species. The European beech is the dominant forest tree species in Serbia, featuring high ecological importance and economic value. In mixed or pure stands, beech forests cover approximately 660,400 ha, accounting for 29.3% of the total Serbian forest area. In the present study, the effects of climate change on the distribution of the European beech stands in Serbia, with an emphasis on their elevation shifts, were examined using species distribution models (SDMs). Data for the present tree cover in Serbia, climate projections, and environmental data were used for model building. The models were first tested against present inventory data. In these tests, the models were found to provide accurate projections, as shown by their true skills statistics (TSS) values ranging from 0.652 to 0.736 and area under the curve (AUC) values ranging from 0.868 to 0.937. The potential distribution patterns predicted by the models indicate that the European beech elevational distribution in Serbia would decrease, exhibiting a significant upward shift in elevation during the first part of this century. Current beech stand locations could be changed, and other areas at higher elevations may be more suitable for beech growth. After 2071, European beech stands at elevations below 500 m would be even smaller. This change is caused by temperature rise and occurrence of climate extremes. However, on the highest elevations, further upward shift of the species is not expected.

Projecting Podocarpaceae response to climate change: we are not out of the woods yet

“…The effects of climate change on the geographic distribution of a wide range of tree communities have been reported across the world (Bakkenes et al 2002;Aitken et al 2008;Essl et al 2011;Aguileé et al 2019;Burley et al 2019;Kambach et al 2019;Pavlović et al 2019;Sedmáková et al 2019;Fricke et al 2022). Podocarpus henkelii was predicted to occupy the third largest geographic range under future climate emission scenarios (Figure 2).…”

“…The dispersal of A. falcatus and P. latifolius seeds by birds, bats, baboons, and monkeys (Geldenhuys 1993;Negash 2003) However, shifting to higher elevations and longitudinal shifts seem to be the most common responses to climate change (Pavlović et al 2019;Sedmáková et al 2019).…”

The component parts of the first nominated Natural Heritage site for the Republic of Serbia

“…was an important refuge area for its surroundings, with persisting forest vegetation on some parts during the glacial ages. These old-growth beech forest would mitigate the effects of global warming, enhancing the persistence of vulnerable species in mountainous ecosystems, heavily influenced by the global warming (Kirchmeir & Kovarovics, 2016a), as research shows that beech in Serbia will gravitate towards higher elevations in the XXI century (Stojanović et al 2014;Pavlović et al 2019).…”

Biomod2 modeling for predicting the potential ecological distribution of three Fritillaria species under climate change

“…A potentially useful pathway may be the development of hybrid approaches, such as Biomod2, which combines a suite of algorithms using the same set of initial data and parameterization (Araújo and New 2007;Thuiller 2014). Biomod2 has been successfully applied in the distribution prediction of lemurs (Brown and Yoder 2015), Fagus sylvatica (Pavlović et al 2019) and cocoa (Igawa et al 2022).…”