Recovery and resilience of European temperate forests after large and severe disturbances
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Recent observations of tree regeneration failures following large and severe disturbances, particularly under warm and dry conditions, have raised concerns about the resilience of forest ecosystems and their recovery dynamics in the face of climate change. We investigated the recovery of temperate forests in Europe after large and severe disturbance events (i.e., resulting in more than 70% canopy loss in patches larger than 1 ha), with a range of one to five decades since the disturbance occurred. The study included 143 sites of different forest types and management practices that had experienced 28 disturbance events, including windthrow (132 sites), fire (six sites), and bark beetle outbreaks (five sites). We focused on assessing post-disturbance tree density, structure, and composition as key indicators of forest resilience. We compared post-disturbance height-weighted densities with site-specific pre-disturbance densities to qualitatively assess the potential for structural and compositional recovery, overall and for dominant tree species, respectively. Additionally, we analyzed the ecological drivers of post-windthrow tree density, such as forest management, topography, and post-disturbance aridity, using a series of generalized additive models. The descriptive results show that European temperate forests have been resilient to past large and severe disturbances and concurrent climate conditions, albeit with lower resilience to high-severity fire compared with other disturbance agents. Across sites and disturbance agents, the potential for structural recovery was greater than that of compositional recovery, with a large proportion of plots becoming dominated by early-successional species after disturbance. The models showed that increasing elevation and salvage logging negatively affect post-windthrow regeneration, particularly for late-successional species, while pioneer species are negatively affected by increasing summer aridity. These findings provide a key baseline for assessing future recovery and resilience following the recent occurrence of widespread disturbance in the region and in anticipation of future conditions characterized by increasing heat and drought stress.
Originalsprog | Engelsk |
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Artikelnummer | e17159 |
Tidsskrift | Global Change Biology |
Vol/bind | 30 |
Udgave nummer | 2 |
Antal sider | 18 |
ISSN | 1354-1013 |
DOI | |
Status | Udgivet - 2024 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS) (project J4‐1765) and the Forest Value projects I‐MAESTRO and FORECO. JEngelhart, KKöster, MMetslaid, and FVodde were supported by the Estonian Research Council grant PRG1586. BKonôpka and VŠebeň were supported by OP RDE grant EVA4.0, No. Z.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000803, and the project APVV‐18‐0086 of the Slovak Research and Development Agency. MBrabec was supported by the long‐term strategic development financing of the Institute of Computer Science (Czech Republic RVO 67985807). RBače and MSvoboda were supported by the Czech Science Foundation (project No. 21‐27454S), the TRANSFER MSMT LTT20016 project, project TACR DivLand SS02030018, and project Horizon Europe WildE. MKopecký, MMacek, JBrůna, and JWild were supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences (project RVO 67985939). SKucbel, JPittner, and JVencurik received support from the Slovak Research and Development Agency under Contract No. APVV‐21‐0199 and the Scientific Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic, project VEGA 1/0606/22. DDobrowolska was supported by the General Directorate of State Forests (grant 500‐456 Poland). Data collection in Bulgaria was additionally supported by project NIS‐B‐1219 of the University of Forestry.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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