🍁 Trees in Europe are increasingly dying prematurely. A new WSL study on French #forests now shows that it is not only extremely dry summers but #climate anomalies in general that are driving tree mortality – particularly warm and wet springs: www.wsl.ch/en/news/why-... @lsce-ipsl.bsky.social 🌍

Why Europe’s trees are dying

Deviations from the usual climate are causing trees to die prematurely. Even favourable growing conditions can have a negative impact.

wsl.ch

🌳How close are tropical forests to their photosynthetic limit? Our new paper highlights the vulnerability of these ecosystems to further warming and the importance of accurately representing canopy temperature. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... @wslresearch.bsky.social

Pleased to share our latest paper on pollinator thermoregulation and microclimate use is now out! 🐝🦋🪰 Pollinators dynamically track desirable temperatures in both natural and artificial microclimates. kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...

Out now in @natecoevo.nature.com: Increasing forest disturbance enhances habitat suitability for Europe’s large herbivores. Great work led by Julian Oeser and @tkuemmerle.bsky.social! doi.org/10.1038/s415...

📖 Published📖 Unravelling the spatial and temporal variability of natural disturbances in European forests 🌳 🌍 🪲 🔎 Find out more: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/13652664...

Accelerated tree mortality after a half-century of stability in an old-growth forest: Insights from a 72-year study www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Accelerated tree mortality after a half-century of stability in an old-growth forest: Insights from a 72-year study

Although considered a relatively stable successional stage, old-growth forests can be dynamic, owing to both endogenous (life history, population dyna…

sciencedirect.com

Forests and wood use are important for climate change mitigation. However, there are different views on how to assess these contributions, leading to contradictory recommendations for forest policy and management. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🌲Do Swiss trees change their niche as they grow? Studying 43 species across Switzerland, it was found that most don't! Juveniles & adults share similar climatic niches, with ontogenetic shifts being small and still seemingly unrelated to climate change 👉️ buff.ly/d2w8saq

Will climate change increase global forest deadwood carbon stocks (because of increasing tree productivity and mortality) or decrease it (because of increased deadwood decomposition)? Find out in the new paper by Edelmann et al., out now in @commsearth.nature.com doi.org/10.1038/s432...

🌳 Across the Atlantic Forest, at a broad-scale, seed rain patterns in 52 fragments were evaluated. While seed density increased with fragmentation, rainfall and forest cover were the main drivers of seed rain diversity, highlighting habitat amount as key to forest regeneration 👉️ buff.ly/g2bgrRK

New paper out @currentbiology.bsky.social! Led by Clara Wild we show that restoring heterogeneity in forests increases bat and bird diversity. 🧪🍁 Interestingly mechanisms differ between taxa 🐦🦇 and diversity facets. @cofeuniwue.bsky.social @betafor.bsky.social

Restoring structural complexity in temperate forests increases bat and bird diversity

Wild et al. show in a large-scale experiment that increasing forest structural complexity enhances bat and bird diversity by separating within- and between-patch contributions to landscape diversity, ...

cell.com

new article at @waldwissen.bsky.social : Tree-species mixtures reduce the risk of biotic damage and increase the resilience of forest stands. Preventive silvicultural management of stands plays a key role; @wslresearch.bsky.social; @swissforestlab.bsky.social www.waldwissen.net/en/forestry/...

Mixed forests as a preventive strategy against biotic forest damage

Climate change and global trade are increasing pressure from native and alien biotic pests. Numerous studies show that mixed stands are subject to less damage on average than monocultures. However, it...

waldwissen.net

New paper out today @currentbiology.bsky.social led by Toby Jackson and Lucy Beese shows the profound impact that liana cutting has on the structural recovery of logged tropical forests 📜 doi.org/10.1016/j.cu...

Hurray - new paper out in Functional Ecology! @funecology.bsky.social @econovoau.bsky.social 
Wild large herbivores promote plant diversity and functional redundancy by reducing dominance: besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 1/5

Wild large herbivores promote plant diversity and functional redundancy by reducing dominance

Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Europe's forests are under pressure - elevated mortality & lower growth. New work by Jessie Foest sheds new light on the response of forest reproduction - seed production is declining too. Obvious question is what this means for regeneration & the future of forests? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A study in Nature Ecology & Evolution from a temperate forest landscape in Germany shows that a single year of tree responses to intense insect herbivory can counteract a decade of environmentally driven shifts in spring phenology. go.nature.com/4uASGMU 🌍🧪

The first pantropical paper of the PANTROP project pantrop-eu.com is a fact! In a study led by Tomonari Matsuo published in Global Change Biology lnkd.in/eJy_Jrgb we show that (see below)

🌱Study reveals how competition drives dynamic shifts in plant traits, with species becoming more similar aboveground and diverging in root traits. Findings suggest that complementary trait shifts reduce competition & facilitate coexistence👉️ buff.ly/lZQoZvp

Paper published, led by Forest Isbell. We developed a new theoretical framework to predict how temporal stability and resilience emerge from the combined effects of resistance and recovery. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Predicting temporal stability and resilience from resistance and recovery - Nature

New predictions for how temporal stability and resilience depend on their resistance and recovery components are explored.

nature.com

Ökophysiologisch fundierte Waldbewirtschaftung ist kein Rezept, sondern ein Denkmuster: Wer versteht, warum Bäume bei Hitze und Dürre absterben, kann Massnahmen gezielt an Schwachstellen ausrichten @waldwissen.bsky.social : www.waldwissen.net/de/waldwirts...

Klimafreundliche Waldbewirtschaftung: Baumphysiologie als Grundlage

Ökophysiologisch fundierte Waldbewirtschaftung ist kein Rezept, sondern ein Denkmuster: Wer versteht, warum Bäume bei Hitze und Dürre absterben, kann Massnahmen gezielt an Schwachstellen ausrichten. W...

waldwissen.net

🚨 New BE paper on #forest #microclimates!🌲 Across 11 years and 149 plots in Germany, variability was driven mainly by precipitation and outside temperatures -not by low- to medium-intensity timber harvest. #Climate extremes may pose the greatest #biodiversity risk.🌐 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Impacts of forest management on the inter-annual variability of forest microclimate - European Journal of Forest Research

The microclimatic conditions within forests have great importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Consequently, understanding how management and associated changes in forest structure driv...

link.springer.com

🌿A century of vegetation change in temperate mountain forests shows that shifts in plant diversity were driven mainly by the cessation of human management, not by recent climate changes🌲 #ForestEcology #GlobalChange 👉️ buff.ly/zB0SyRJ

Da Vinci’s mischief: xylem conduits in the stems of woody plants do not furcate Alemán-Sancheschúlz et al. nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Very interesting study challenging previous estimates of the magnitude of C storage difference between boreal primary forests and managed secondary forests in Europe.

Higher carbon storage in primary than secondary boreal forests in Sweden

Boreal forests provide considerable global land carbon storage and uptake, but they are being rapidly transformed to managed secondary forests, with poorly quantified implications for ecosystem carbon...

science.org

Dense, dark forests in Europe are a modern phenomenon - Europe’s landscapes for 23 Myr were mostly tree- & flower-rich mosaics shaped by large herbivores, not dense #forests, see our new synthesis www.eurekalert.org/news-release... #forests #woodlands #paleoecology #nature #trees #refiorestation

Dense, dark forests in Europe are a modern phenomenon

A new, comprehensive study shows that Europe’s landscapes over the past more than 20 million years have predominantly been a mosaic of grasslands, scrub and woodlands of varying density. A light...

eurekalert.org

🔊Probably already one of my top 10 papers this year: @leoniegass.bsky.social compiled for 28 tree species high resolution forest regeneration maps across Germany from inventory data! 14.3% of forests have low regeneration density, 30.4% has low species richness 👉 doi.org/10.1111/1365...

Mapping the next forest generation reveals multiple regeneration gaps across German forests

Our study provides the first nationwide, high-resolution assessment of forest regeneration, offering a valuable baseline for monitoring forest development. The regeneration density and indicator maps...

doi.org

Suzanne Stas leads this new analysis of long-term impacts of selective logging on tropical forests. In Vietnam, intense logging shifted forest communities towards lighter-wood trees and depleted focal species, reducing both carbon storage and timber potential. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Logging intensity alters tree species composition and wood density, but not tree diversity, in lowland forests in Vietnam - Biodiversity and Conservation

Biodiversity and Conservation - Tropical forests host considerable biodiversity but face degradation from timber extraction (“logging”). We examined how logging intensity affected tree...

link.springer.com

Together with @juditlecinadiaz.bsky.social & @monicagturner.bsky.social, we synthesized studies on post-disturbance forest reorganization. Key insight: Self-replacement is common across biomes, i.e., disturbances act as catalysts of change only under specific conditions doi.org/10.1111/geb....

The future of Europe’s forest disturbance regimes– a thread. Tl, dr: Disturbances from wildfire, bark beetles & wind will continue to increase in the coming decades. Under unabated climate change disturbances could more than double by 2100. New paper out in @science.org doi.org/10.1126/scie...

In Central Europe, forest management shapes post-disturbance recovery mostly through what’s left behind (disturbance legacies 🪵🌱) than impacting forest growth rates 📈 + Set-aside forests regrow canopy height as fast as managed forests New paper out in ForEcolMngt 🌳 doi.org/10.1016/j.fo...