Publications by authors named "Juan C Linares"

Circum-Mediterranean firs are considered among the most drought-sensitive species to climate change. Understanding the genetic basis of trees' adaptive capacity and intra-specific variability to drought avoidance is mandatory to define conservation measures, thus potentially preventing their extinction. We focus here on and , both relict tree species, endemic from south Spain and north Morocco, respectively.

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Ongoing climatic change is threatening the survival of drought-sensitive tree species, such as silver fir (). Drought-induced dieback had been previously explored in this conifer, although the role played by tree-level genetic diversity and its relationship with growth patterns and soil microsite conditions remained elusive. We used double digest restriction-site-associated DNA sequencing (ddRADseq) to describe different genetic characteristics of five silver fir forests in the Spanish Pyrenees, including declining and non-declining trees.

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Introduction: Understanding the adaptive capacity to current climate change of drought-sensitive tree species is mandatory, given their limited prospect of migration and adaptation as long-lived, sessile organisms. Knowledge about the molecular and eco-physiological mechanisms that control drought resilience is thus key, since water shortage appears as one of the main abiotic factors threatening forests ecosystems. However, our current background is scarce, especially in conifers, due to their huge and complex genomes.

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The frequency and intensity of drought events are increasing worldwide, challenging the adaptive capacity of several tree species. Here, we evaluate tree growth patterns and climate sensitivity to precipitation, temperature, and drought in the relict Moroccan fir . We selected two study sites, formerly stated as harboring contrasting taxa ( and , respectively).

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Acute and early symptoms of forest dieback linked to climate warming and drought episodes have been reported for relict Boiss. fir forests from Southern Spain, particularly at their lower ecotone. Satellite, orthoimages, and field data were used to assess forest decline, tree mortality, and gap formation and recolonization in the lower half of the altitudinal range of forests (850-1550 m) for the last 36 years (1985-2020).

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Local differentiation at distribution limits may influence species' adaptive capacity to environmental changes. However, drivers, such gene flow and local selection, are still poorly understood. We focus on the role played by range limits in mountain forests to test the hypothesis that relict tree populations are subjected to genetic differentiation and local adaptation.

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Climate change challenges the adaptive capacity of several forest tree species in the face of increasing drought and rising temperatures. Therefore, understanding the mechanistic connections between genetic diversity and drought resilience is highly valuable for conserving drought-sensitive forests. Nonetheless, the post-drought recovery in trees from a transcriptomic perspective has not yet been studied by comparing contrasting phenotypes.

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Tree-ring data has been widely used to inform about tree growth responses to drought at the individual scale, but less is known about how tree growth sensitivity to drought scales up driving changes in forest dynamics. Here, we related tree-ring growth chronologies and stand-level forest changes in basal area from two independent data sets to test if tree-ring responses to drought match stand forest dynamics (stand basal area growth, ingrowth, and mortality). We assessed if tree growth and changes in forest basal area covary as a function of spatial scale and tree taxa (gymnosperm or angiosperm).

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Rear-edge populations at the xeric distribution limit of tree species are particularly vulnerable to forest dieback triggered by drought. This is the case of silver fir (Abies alba) forests located in Southwestern Europe. While silver fir drought-induced dieback patterns have been previously explored, information on the role played by nutritional impairment is lacking despite its potential interactions with tree carbon-water balances.

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Forest tree species are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. As sessile organisms with long generation times, their adaptation to a local changing environment may rely on epigenetic modifications when allele frequencies are not able to shift fast enough. However, the current lack of knowledge on this field is remarkable, due to many challenges that researchers face when studying this issue.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Forests are experiencing changes in productivity and growth due to climate and land-use shifts, prompting a need for better management practices in the face of climate change.
  • - A study analyzed the growth patterns of six conifer species in both natural and planted settings during periods of drought, highlighting how factors like rainfall and temperature impacted growth differently across species and environments.
  • - Findings revealed that while drought negatively affected growth in all stands, some plantations showed unexpected resilience, suggesting that plantations could play a role in climate mitigation despite earlier expectations of their sensitivity to climate changes.
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Article Synopsis
  • Climate warming is expected to raise treelines by increasing temperatures and extending the growing season, but there's limited data on how this will affect tree growth on an annual basis.
  • A study using tree-ring data from Eurasia and the Americas found that while temperature and growth rates were positively linked during the 20th century, this relationship varies based on tree age and other local factors.
  • Future simulations predict that as the growing season continues to lengthen in the 21st century, tree growth may become less reliant on temperature increases, potentially influencing ecosystem dynamics in cold regions and altering responses to climate change.
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Forest vulnerability to drought is expected to increase under anthropogenic climate change, and drought-induced mortality and community dynamics following drought have major ecological and societal impacts. Here, we show that tree mortality concomitant with drought has led to short-term (mean 5 y, range 1 to 23 y after mortality) vegetation-type conversion in multiple biomes across the world (131 sites). Self-replacement of the dominant tree species was only prevalent in 21% of the examined cases and forests and woodlands shifted to nonwoody vegetation in 10% of them.

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Understanding how climate warming and land-use changes determine the vulnerability of forests to drought is critical. However, we still lack: (i) robust quantifications of long-term growth changes during aridification processes, (ii) links between growth decline, changes in forest cover, stand structure and soil conditions, and (iii) forecasts of growth variability to projected climate warming. We investigated tree-ring records over the past 400-700 years, quantified changes in grazing area and forest cover during the 20th century, sampled current stand structure, and analyzed soil organic carbon δC and total nitrogen δN of Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica (Endl.

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Global climate change is expected to further raise the frequency and severity of extreme events, such as droughts. The effects of extreme droughts on trees are difficult to disentangle given the inherent complexity of drought events (frequency, severity, duration, and timing during the growing season). Besides, drought effects might be modulated by trees' phenotypic variability, which is, in turn, affected by long-term local selective pressures and management legacies.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates how tree resilience to drought affects survival by analyzing a database of >3,500 trees from 118 sites, comparing those that survived droughts to those that died.
  • - Trees that died during droughts showed lower resilience to prior droughts, indicating that resilience is key for long-term survival.
  • - Angiosperms and gymnosperms exhibit differing strategies for dealing with drought: angiosperms struggle with initial drought impacts, while gymnosperms have difficulty recovering to pre-drought growth rates.
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Article Synopsis
  • Plant traits, which include various characteristics like morphology and physiology, play a crucial role in how plants interact with their environment and impact ecosystems, making them essential for research in areas like ecology, biodiversity, and environmental management.
  • The TRY database, established in 2007, has become a vital resource for global plant trait data, promoting open access and enabling researchers to identify and fill data gaps for better ecological modeling.
  • Although the TRY database provides extensive data, there are significant areas lacking consistent measurements, particularly for continuous traits that vary among individuals in their environments, presenting a major challenge that requires collaboration and coordinated efforts to address.
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The effects of climate change on forest growth are not homogeneous across tree species distribution ranges because of inter-population variability and spatial heterogeneity. Although latitudinal and thermal gradients in growth patterns have been widely investigated, changes in these patterns along longitudinal gradients due to the different timing and severity of regional droughts are less studied. Here, we investigated these responses in Mediterranean Black pine (Pinus nigra Arn.

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Article Synopsis
  • Forecasted increases in drought frequency and severity may lead to declines in forest productivity globally, with species responses influenced by their functional traits.
  • The study analyzed forest resilience to drought using tree-ring width data and satellite imagery across 11 tree species and 502 forests in Spain, revealing that TRWi data offers more sensitivity to forest resilience than NDVI data.
  • Results showed that evergreen gymnosperms in semi-arid Mediterranean forests had lower resistance but higher recovery potential compared to deciduous angiosperms in humid temperate areas, suggesting that increased drought frequency could limit recovery capabilities, especially for species in drier environments.
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Warmer and drier climatic conditions are projected for the 21st century; however, the role played by extreme climatic events on forest vulnerability is still little understood. For example, more severe droughts and heat waves could threaten quaternary relict tree refugia such as Circum-Mediterranean fir forests (CMFF). Using tree-ring data and a process-based model, we characterized the major climate constraints of recent (1950-2010) CMFF growth to project their vulnerability to 21st-century climate.

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Article Synopsis
  • Global climate changes are affecting where and how plants like Scots pine grow, especially at the edges of their natural ranges.
  • Researchers studied how temperature and rainfall over the last 100 years impacted the growth of Scots pine at different altitudes and latitudes.
  • The results show that while Scots pine is expected to grow more in some areas, like the treeline of southern populations until 2050, it might struggle in warmer, lower areas.
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Article Synopsis
  • Growth models can help evaluate how forests are affected by climate change, especially in areas prone to drought.
  • In a study of three tree species in NE Spain, it was found that warming temperatures could significantly hinder the growth of silver fir and Scots pine, particularly at their southern distribution limits, while mountain pine may actually benefit from the warmer conditions.
  • The most severe emissions scenario predicts notable growth declines for silver fir and Scots pine by 2050, potentially leading to local extinctions, while mountain pine could see an increase in growth due to longer growing seasons.
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Facilitation enables plants to improve their fitness in stressful environments. The overall impact of plant-plant interactions on the population dynamics of protégées is the net result of both positive and negative effects that may act simultaneously along the plant life cycle, and depends on the environmental context. This study evaluates the impact of the nurse plant Juniperus sabina on different stages of the life cycle of the forb Helleborus foetidus.

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Forests play a key role in the carbon balance of terrestrial ecosystems. One of the main uncertainties in global change predictions lies in how the spatiotemporal dynamics of forest productivity will be affected by climate warming. Here we show an increasing influence of climate on the spatial variability of tree growth during the last 120 y, ultimately leading to unprecedented temporal coherence in ring-width records over wide geographical scales (spatial synchrony).

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Optimal allocation of resources is crucial to maximize plant success. Plants modify their economic strategies by adjusting functional traits in response to shifts in environmental conditions. Facilitation has been recognized as a major biotic filter of trait distribution in communities, although the effect of facilitation on intraspecific variability has been scarcely explored.

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