Excess forest mortality is consistently linked to drought across Europe.

Nat Commun

Ecosystem Dynamics and Forest Management Group, Technical University of Munich, Hans-Carl-von-Carlowitz-Platz 2, 85354, Freising, Germany.

Published: December 2020

AI Article Synopsis

  • Recent studies indicate that drought is causing significant tree mortality in European forests, with a lack of extensive quantitative data prior to this analysis.
  • By examining satellite data from 1987 to 2016, researchers found a clear link between drought conditions and increased forest canopy mortality, particularly when water availability drops below certain thresholds.
  • Approximately 500,000 hectares of forest experienced excess mortality due to drought in Europe during this period, highlighting the potential for future droughts to result in even more widespread tree death.

Article Abstract

Pulses of tree mortality caused by drought have been reported recently in forests around the globe, but large-scale quantitative evidence is lacking for Europe. Analyzing high-resolution annual satellite-based canopy mortality maps from 1987 to 2016 we here show that excess forest mortality (i.e., canopy mortality exceeding the long-term mortality trend) is significantly related to drought across continental Europe. The relationship between water availability and mortality showed threshold behavior, with excess mortality increasing steeply when the integrated climatic water balance from March to July fell below -1.6 standard deviations of its long-term average. For -3.0 standard deviations the probability of excess canopy mortality was 91.6% (83.8-97.5%). Overall, drought caused approximately 500,000 ha of excess forest mortality between 1987 and 2016 in Europe. We here provide evidence that drought is an important driver of tree mortality at the continental scale, and suggest that a future increase in drought could trigger widespread tree mortality in Europe.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7713373PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19924-1DOI Listing

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