Significant increase in natural disturbance impacts on European forests since 1950

Patacca, Marco; Lindner, Marcus; Lucas‐Borja, Manuel Esteban; Cordonnier, Thomas; Fidej, Gal; Gardiner, Barry; Hauf, Ylva; Jasinevičius, Gediminas; Labonne, Sophie; Linkevičius, Edgaras; Mahnken, Mats; Milanović, Slobodan; Nabuurs, Gert‐Jan; Nagel, Thomas A.; Nikinmaa, Laura; Panayotov, Momchil; Berčák, Roman; Seidl, Rupert; Sever, Maša Zorana Ostrogović; Socha, Jarosław; Thom, Dominik; Vuletić, Dijana; Zudin, Sergey; Schelhaas, M.J.

doi:10.1111/gcb.16531

Cited by 145 publications

(101 citation statements)

References 121 publications

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“…The hot and dry summers in recent years resulted in unprecedented mortality. A similar fluctuation and drastic increase in tree mortality caused by bark beetles in the last 20 years were observed on the European scale (Patacca et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Climate‐driven tree growth and mortality in the Black Forest, Germany—Long‐term observations

Spiecker

Kahle

2023

Global Change Biology

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Episodic tree mortality can be caused by various reasons. This study describes climate‐driven tree mortality and tree growth in the Black Forest mountain range in Germany. It is based on a 68‐year consistent data series describing the annual mortality of all trees growing in a forest area of almost 250 thousand ha. The study excludes mortality caused by storm, snow and ice, and fire. The sequence of the remaining mortality, the so‐called “desiccated trees,” is analyzed and compared with the sequence of the climatic water balance during the growing season and the annual radial growth of Norway spruce in the Black Forest. The annual radial growth series covers 121 years and the climatic water balance series 140 years. These unique time series enable a quantitative assessment of multidecadal drought and heat impacts on growth and mortality of forest trees on a regional spatial scale. Data compiled here suggest that the mortality of desiccated trees in the Black Forest during the last 68 years is driven by the climatic water balance. Decreasing climatic water balance coincided with an increase in tree mortality and growth decline. Consecutive hot and dry summers enhance mortality and growth decline as a consequence of drought legacies lasting several years. The sensitivity of tree growth and mortality to changes in the climatic water balance increases with the decreasing trend of the climatic water balance. The findings identify the climatic water balance as the main driver of mortality and growth variation during the 68‐year observation period on a landscape‐scale including a variety of different sites. They suggest that bark beetle population dynamics modify mortality rates. They as well provide evidence that the mortality during the last 140 years never was as high as in the most recent years.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Climate‐driven tree growth and mortality in the Black Forest, Germany—Long‐term observations

Spiecker

Kahle

2023

Global Change Biology

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“…Large‐scale disturbances caused by global climate change and anthropogenic environmental modification have profound impacts on biodiversity and the provision of vital ecosystem services around the world (Aavik et al, 2021; Barnosky et al, 2012; Seidl et al, 2017). In recent years, the frequency and severity of large‐scale disturbances have increased globally (Patacca et al, 2023; Seidl et al, 2017; Westerling, 2016). While natural disturbances have historically impacted biomes and can contribute to the maintenance of biodiversity (Schowalter, 2012), recent changes in disturbance regimes may result in unprecedented biodiversity loss (Bowd et al, 2023; Johnstone et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A large‐scale field experiment of artificially caused landslides with replications revealed the response of the ground‐dwelling beetle community to landslides

Furusawa

Makoto

Utsumi

2023

Ecology and Evolution

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Precipitation-induced landslides, which are predicted to increase under the changing climate, may have large impacts on insect community properties. However, understanding of how insect community properties shift following landslides remains limited because replicated research involving landslides, which are large-scale disturbances with stochastic natural causes, is difficult. To tackle this issue, we conducted a large-scale field experiment by artificially causing landslides at multiple sites. We established 12 landslide sites, each 35 m × 35 m, and 6 undisturbed sites in both planted and natural forests and collected ground-dwelling beetles 1 year later. We found that forest type (i.e., pre-disturbance vegetation) did not affect the structure of a grounddwelling beetle community disturbed by a landslide (landslide community), but the structure of an undisturbed community was affected by forest type. Moreover, the structures of landslide and undisturbed communities were completely different, possibly because landslides create harsh environments that act as an ecological filter.Thus, a niche-selection process may have a critical role in community assembly at landslide sites. There were no significant differences in species diversity between undisturbed and landslide communities, suggesting that landslides to not reduce species richness overall. However, among-site variability in species composition was much greater at landslide sites than at undisturbed sites. This result suggests that stochastic colonization predominated at the landslide sites more than undisturbed sites. Synthesis and applications. Overall, our results suggest that both deterministic and stochastic processes are critical in community assembly, at least in the early postlandslide stage. Our large-scale manipulative field experiment with replications has thus resulted in new insights into biological community properties after a landslide.

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“…This implies that their calculations are mainly related to (sub-) mature forests, where trees are bigger, and therefore less dense than in newly planted forest where density is a factor for controlling competition with shrubs and herbaceous plants. Additionally, it is well known that the relationship between forest area and tree (biomass) densities is not always linear [58,59]. As planting densities vary greatly between species and across geographies [60], they need to be considered differently in each country.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three billion new trees in the EU’s biodiversity strategy: low ambition, but better environmental outcomes?

Lee

Pugh

Patacca

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The EU Biodiversity strategy aims to plant 3 billion trees by 2030, in order to improve ecosystem restoration and biodiversity. Here, we compute the land area that would be required to support this number of newly planted trees by taking account of different tree species and planting regimes across the EU member states. We find that 3 billion trees would require a total land area of between 0.81 and 1.37 Mha (avg. 1.02 Mha). The historic forest expansion in the EU since 2010 was 2.44 Mha, meaning that despite 3 billion trees sounding like a large number this target is considerably lower than historic afforestation rates within the EU, i.e. only 40% of the past trend. Abandoned agricultural land is often proposed as providing capacity for afforestation. We estimate agricultural abandoned land areas from the HIstoric Land Dynamics Assessment+ (HILDA+) database using two time thresholds (abandonment since 2009 or 2014) to identify potential areas for tree planting. The area of agricultural abandoned land was 2.6 Mha (potentially accommodating 7.2 billion trees) since 2009 and 0.2 Mha (potentially accommodating 741 million trees) since 2014. Our study highlights that sufficient space could be available to meet the 3 billion tree planting target from abandoned land. However, large-scale afforestation beyond abandoned land could have displacement effects elsewhere in the world because of the embodied deforestation in the import of agricultural crops and livestock. This would negate the expected benefits of EU afforestation. Hence, the EU’s relatively low ambition on tree planting may actually be better in terms of avoiding such displacement effects. We suggest that tree planting targets should be set at a level that considers physical ecosystem dynamic as well as socio-economic condition.

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Significant increase in natural disturbance impacts on European forests since 1950

Abstract: Over the last decades, the natural disturbance is increasingly putting pressure on European forests. Shifts in disturbance regimes may compromise forest functioning

Cited by 145 publications

References 121 publications

Climate‐driven tree growth and mortality in the Black Forest, Germany—Long‐term observations

Climate‐driven tree growth and mortality in the Black Forest, Germany—Long‐term observations

A large‐scale field experiment of artificially caused landslides with replications revealed the response of the ground‐dwelling beetle community to landslides

Three billion new trees in the EU’s biodiversity strategy: low ambition, but better environmental outcomes?

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