TY - JOUR

T1 - Recovery and resilience of European temperate forests after large and severe disturbances

AU - Cerioni, Matteo

AU - Brabec, Marek

AU - Bače, Radek

AU - Bāders, Endijs

AU - Bončina, Andrej

AU - Brůna, Josef

AU - Chećko, Ewa

AU - Cordonnier, Thomas

AU - de Koning, Johannes H.C.

AU - Diaci, Jurij

AU - Dobrowolska, Dorota

AU - Dountchev, Alexander

AU - Engelhart, Jeroen

AU - Fidej, Gal

AU - Fuhr, Marc

AU - Garbarino, Matteo

AU - Jansons, Āris

AU - Keren, Srdjan

AU - Kitenberga, Māra

AU - Klopčič, Matija

AU - Konôpka, Bohdan

AU - Kopecký, Martin

AU - Köster, Kajar

AU - Kucbel, Stanislav

AU - Lacombe, Eric

AU - Laurent, Lisa

AU - Leyman, Anja

AU - Lingua, Emanuele

AU - Macek, Martin

AU - Maciejewski, Zbigniew

AU - Malandra, Francesco

AU - Marzano, Raffaella

AU - Metslaid, Marek

AU - Morresi, Donato

AU - Panayotov, Momchil

AU - Pawlak, Bogdan

AU - Pittner, Ján

AU - Šebeň, Vladimír

AU - Socha, Jarosław

AU - Svoboda, Miroslav

AU - Szwagrzyk, Jerzy

AU - Tsvetanov, Nickolay

AU - Urbinati, Carlo

AU - Vallet, Patrick

AU - Van de Kerckhove, Peter

AU - Vandekerkhove, Kris

AU - Vencurik, Jaroslav

AU - Vitali, Alessandro

AU - Vodde, Floortje

AU - Wild, Jan

AU - Nagel, Thomas A.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2024 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

PY - 2024

Y1 - 2024

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - environmental filtering

KW - forest reorganization

KW - ground-based inventories

KW - post-disturbance regeneration

KW - recovery drivers

KW - salvage logging

U2 - 10.1111/gcb.17159

DO - 10.1111/gcb.17159

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85184251684

VL - 30

JO - Global Change Biology

JF - Global Change Biology

SN - 1354-1013

IS - 2

M1 - e17159

ER -