Increased Central European forest mortality explained by higher harvest rates driven by enhanced productivity

Increasing tree growth and mortality rates in Europe are still poorly understood and have been attributed to a variety of drivers. This study explored the role of climate drivers, management and age structure in driving changes in tree mortality rates in six Central European countries from 1985 to 2...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental research letters 2022-11, Vol.17 (11), p.114007
Main Authors: Scheel, Marieke, Lindeskog, Mats, Smith, Benjamin, Suvanto, Susanne, Pugh, Thomas A M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age composition
Canopies
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide concentration
climate
Climate change
CO2 fertilisation
European forest
fertilisation
Forest growth
forest management
Forest productivity
Forests
harvest
Mortality
Productivity
Satellite observation
tree mortality
Trees
Trends
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Summary:Increasing tree growth and mortality rates in Europe are still poorly understood and have been attributed to a variety of drivers. This study explored the role of climate drivers, management and age structure in driving changes in tree mortality rates in six Central European countries from 1985 to 2010, using the process-based vegetation model LPJ-GUESS. Simulations show a strong positive trend in canopy mortality rates in Central Europe, consistent with satellite observations. This trend was explained by an assumed increase in managed thinning in response to a modelled increase in forest productivity caused by climate change and rising atmospheric CO 2 concentration. Simulated rates of canopy mortality were highly sensitive to the minimum tree size threshold applied for inclusion in the rate calculation, agreeing with satellite observations that are likely to only capture the loss of relatively large trees. The calculated trends in mortality rate also differed substantially depending on the metric used (i.e. carbon, stem or canopy mortality), highlighting the challenge of comparing tree mortality trends from different observation types. We conclude that changes in forest productivity and management in combination can profoundly affect regional-scale patterns of tree mortality. Our findings underscore the fact that increasing forest mortality can occur without reductions in forest growth when mediated by management responses to increasing productivity.
ISSN:1748-9326
1748-9326
DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/ac9635