Identifying drivers of non-stationary climate-growth relationships of European beech

Leifsson, Christopher (avtor), Buras, Allan (avtor), Baittinger, Claudia (avtor), Battipaglia, Giovanna (avtor), Biondi, Franco (avtor), Stajić, Branko (avtor), Čada, Vojtěch (avtor), Cavin, Liam (avtor), Čufar, Katarina (avtor), De Luis, Martin (avtor)

The future performance of the widely abundant European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) across its ecological amplitude is uncertain. Although beech is considered drought-sensitive and thus negatively affected by drought events, scientific evidence indicating increasing drought vulnerability under climate change on a cross-regional scale remains elusive. While evaluating changes in climate sensitivity of secondary growth offers a promising avenue, studies from productive, closed-canopy forests suffer from knowledge gaps, especially regarding the natural variability of climate sensitivity and how it relates to radial growth as an indicator of tree vitality. Since beech is sensitive to drought, we in this study use a drought index as a climate variable to account for the combined effects of temperature and water availability and explore how the drought sensitivity of secondary growth varies temporally in dependence on growth variability, growth trends, and climatic water availability across the species' ecological amplitude. Our results show that drought sensitivity is highly variable and non-stationary, though consistently higher at dry sites compared to moist sites. Increasing drought sensitivity can largely be explained by increasing climatic aridity, especially as it is exacerbated by climate change and trees' rank progression within forest communities, as (co-)dominant trees are more sensitive to extra-canopy climatic conditions than trees embedded in understories. However, during the driest periods of the 20th century, growth showed clear signs of being decoupled from climate. This may indicate fundamental changes in system behavior and be early-warning signals of decreasing drought tolerance. The multiple significant interaction terms in our model elucidate the complexity of European beech's drought sensitivity, which needs to be taken into consideration when assessing this species' response to climate change.

• Jezik: Angleški jezik
• Ključne besede: climate sensitivity, dendroecology, forests, drought, linear mixed-effects models, Fagus sylvatica
• Vrsta gradiva: Članek v reviji
• Tipologija: 1.01 - Izvirni znanstveni članek
• Organizacija: BF - Biotehniška fakulteta
• Status publikacije: Objavljeno
• Različica publikacije: Objavljena publikacija
• Leto izida: 2024
• Št. strani: 14 str.
• Številčenje: Vol. 937 [article no. 173321]
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-158264
• UDK: 630*8
• ISSN pri članku: 1879-1026
• DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173321
• COBISS.SI-ID: 197362179
• Datum objave v RUL: 31.05.2024

Gradivo je del revije

• Naslov: Science of the total environment
• Založnik: Elsevier
• ISSN: 1879-1026
• COBISS.SI-ID: 23110917

Sekundarni jezik

• Jezik: Slovenski jezik
• Ključne besede: podnebna občutljivost, dendroekologija, gozdna suša, linearni modeli z mešanimi učinki

Projekti

• Financer: ARIS - Javna agencija za znanstvenoraziskovalno in inovacijsko dejavnost Republike Slovenije
• Številka projekta: P4-0015
• Naslov: Les in lignocelulozni kompoziti