The cumulative impacts of droughts and N deposition on Norway spruce (Picea abies) in Switzerland based on 37 years of forest monitoring

Tresch, Simon; Roth, Tobias; Schindler, Christian; Hopf, Sven-Eric; Remund, Jan; Braun, Sabine

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.164223

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 77 publications

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“…However, regional growth trends are less clear across vast areas in the temperate lowlands where productivity is generally higher. While recent studies mostly report increasing growth trends for European trees 15 and forests 16 – 18 , the prevailing higher growth, however, is increasingly interrupted by severe drought events 14 , 19 – 24 , although growth rates are still larger than historic levels 25 , 26 . Despite this general pattern, regional reports on trends of tree growth are often contrasting and contradictory, varying between accelerating and decelerating forest growth, even within the same region 27 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Forest growth in Europe shows diverging large regional trends

Pretzsch,

del Río,

Arcangeli

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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Forests cover about one-third of Europe’s surface and their growth is essential for climate protection through carbon sequestration and many other economic, environmental, and sociocultural ecosystem services. However, reports on how climate change affects forest growth are contradictory, even for same regions. We used 415 unique long-term experiments including 642 plots across Europe covering seven tree species and surveys from 1878 to 2016, and showed that on average forest growth strongly accelerated since the earliest surveys. Based on a subset of 189 plots in Scots pine (the most widespread tree species in Europe) and high-resolution climate data, we identified clear large-regional differences; growth is strongly increasing in Northern Europe and decreasing in the Southwest. A less pronounced increase, which is probably not mainly driven by climate, prevails on large areas of Western, Central and Eastern Europe. The identified regional growth trends suggest adaptive management on regional level for achieving climate-smart forests.

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