No Future Growth Enhancement Expected at the Northern Edge for European Beech due to Continued Water Limitation.

With ongoing global warming, increasing water deficits promote physiological stress on forest ecosystems with negative impacts on tree growth, vitality, and survival. How individual tree species will react to increased drought stress is therefore a key research question to address for carbon accounting and the development of climate change mitigation strategies. Recent tree-ring studies have shown that trees at higher latitudes will benefit from warmer temperatures, yet this is likely highly species-dependent and less well-known for more temperate tree species.

Winter and spring frost events delay leaf-out, hamper growth and increase mortality in European beech seedlings, with weaker effects of subsequent frosts.

The persistence of plant populations depends crucially on successful regeneration. Yet, little is known about the effects of consecutive winter and spring frost events on the regeneration stage of trees from different seed sources, although this will partly determine the success of climate warming-driven poleward range shifts. In a common garden experiment with European beech () seedlings from winter 2015/2016 to autumn 2017, we studied how simulated successive spring and winter frost events affect leaf-out dates, growth performance, and survival rates of 1- to 2-year-old seedlings from provenances differing in climate at origin.

Peat formation potential of temperate fens increases with hydrological stability.

Peat formation is the key process responsible for carbon sequestration in peatlands. In rich fens, peat is formed by brown mosses and belowground biomass of vascular plants. However, the impact of ecohydrological settings on the contribution of mosses and belowground biomass to peat formation remains an open question.

Plant roots but not hydrology control microbiome composition and methane flux in temperate fen mesocosms.

The rewetting of formerly drained peatlands can help to counteract climate change through the reduction of CO emissions. However, this can lead to resuming CH emissions due to changes in the microbiome, favoring CH-producing archaea. How plants, hydrology and microbiomes interact as ultimate determinants of CH dynamics is still poorly understood.