Temperate forest health in an era of emerging megadisturbance
Abstract
Although disturbances such as fire and native insects can contribute to natural dynamics of forest health, exceptional droughts, directly and in combination with other disturbance factors, are pushing some temperate forests beyond thresholds of sustainability. Interactions from increasing temperatures, drought, native insects and pathogens, and uncharacteristically severe wildfire are resulting in forest mortality beyond the levels of 20th-century experience. Additional anthropogenic stressors, such as atmospheric pollution and invasive species, further weaken trees in some regions. Although continuing climate change will likely drive many areas of temperate forest toward large-scale transformations, management actions can help ease transitions and minimize losses of socially valued ecosystem services.
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Volume 349 | Issue 6250
21 August 2015
21 August 2015
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Acknowledgments
We thank M. Dettinger (U.S. Geological Survey), C. J. Fettig (U.S. Forest Service), J. Hicke (University of Idaho), S. Stephens (University of California, Berkeley), and A. P. Williams (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) for reviewing the draft manuscript; A. P. Williams for providing an update of FDSI trends for Fig. 3; and D. Delany (U.S. Forest Service) for help with figures. C.I.M. and N.L.S. are supported by the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey, respectively.
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Recent climate may have masked the vulnerability of mesic temperate forests
C. I. Millar and N. L. Stephenson (1) argue that climate change is exacerbating drought, altering the life cycle of pests, and threatening temperate forests through massive tree mortality ("megadisturbances"). We strongly agree. These findings, however, are mostly based on dry temperate forests and the potential impact on diverse temperate mesic forests may not be as clear. We posit that better determining climatic impacts on these forests is important because they cover 12 million km2, provide services for >1 billion people, and are a major influence on the global carbon cycle.
The paradigmatic disturbance regime in temperate, mesic forests is frequent, small-scale, asynchronous, or low-impact disturbances. Thus, their resiliency to climatic change at large scales is presumed high. In contrast, vegetation models indicate drastically different ecological states (2) although mechanisms of large-scale dynamics are uncertain, especially in response to extreme climate.
We put forth two hypotheses regarding the climatic vulnerability of temperate, mesic forests, using eastern North America as an example. First, historical land-use drives a synchronous development of forests of large trees, which are more vulnerable to drought (3). Second, though drought induces hydraulic failure at global scale (4), the recent period of ecological research in eastern North America occurred during one of the wettest eras of the last 3-4 centuries, which likely lead to the idea of high resiliency in these systems. Tree-ring records, however, identified megadisturbances in this region 240-350 years ago following extreme climatic events (5). When these hypotheticals are considered together, we surmise that drought-sensitive forests with an increasing density of larger trees (6) that grew under a favorable climate could be at increased risk of suffering megadisturbance under the hot or extended droughts projected for the near future.
We call for research that retrospectively traces centuries of forest dynamics at high temporal resolution in all temperate, mesic forests to understand their vulnerability to climate and megadisturbance.
References
1. C. I. Millar, N. L. Stephenson, Temperate forest health in an era of emerging megadisturbance. Science 349, 823 (August 21, 2015, 2015).
2. W. Ma et al., Fundamental shifts of central hardwood forests under climate change. Ecol. Model. 332, 28 (2016).
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4. B. Choat et al., Global convergence in the vulnerability of forests to drought. Nature 491, 752 (Nov 21, 2012).
5. N. Pederson et al., The legacy of episodic climatic events in shaping broadleaf-dominated forests. Ecol. Monogr. 599–620, 599 (2014).
6. P. E. Kauppi et al., Effects of land management on large trees and carbon stocks. Biogeosciences 12, 855 (2015).