Scientific publications
Lay Summary: to be added
Lay Summary: to be added
Lay Summary: to be added
Eckes-Shephard, A.H., Argles, A.P.K., Brzeziecki, B., Cox, P.M., De Kauwe, M.G., Esquivel-Muelbert, A., Fisher, R.A., Hurtt, G.C., Knauer, J., Koven, C.D., Lehtonen, A., Luyssaert, S., Marqués, L., Ma, L., Marie, G., Moore, J.R., Needham, J.F., Olin, S., Peltoniemi, M., Piltz, K., Sato, H., Sitch, S., Stocker, B.D., Weng, E., Zuleta, D. and Pugh, T.A.M. (2025), Demography, dynamics and data: building confidence for simulating changes in the world’s forests. New Phytol, 248: 2722-2749. https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.70643
Lay Summary:
Forests are vital for storing carbon, regulating water, and supporting biodiversity. Predicting how they respond to climate change and land use is essential for managing carbon and planning conservation. Traditional models often simplify forests as uniform, ignoring differences in tree size and age. This limits their ability to simulate real-world dynamics like regrowth after disturbances.
This study focuses on Vegetation Demographic Models (VDMs), which represent forests more realistically by tracking tree growth, mortality, and size structure. Researchers compared nine VDMs against real-world data from boreal (Finland), temperate (Poland), and tropical (Panama) forests. They looked at how well these models predict carbon storage, tree size distribution, and recovery after a stand replacing disturbance.
The researchers found that:
- All models captured overall carbon recovery and mature forest biomass within observed ranges, but their regrowth speed and early dynamics varied widely.
- Growth rates were often overestimated, while mortality rates were underestimated, leading to unrealistic carbon turnover times.
- Models successfully reproduced important ecological processes like self-thinning (where crowded trees die off), but differed in how long these phases lasted.
- Initial conditions after disturbance strongly influenced recovery trajectories, highlighting the need for better initialisation.
Forests worldwide are in flux, with many recovering from past land use. Accurate models help predict carbon storage. The study calls for improved benchmarks, especially growth and mortality data, to refine these models. With better calibration, VDMs can provide more reliable forecasts of forest dynamics under future climate scenarios.
Lay Summary:
This study explores how forest management impacts carbon storage and whether remote sensing can accurately measure these differences. Forests play a key role in fighting climate change because they store carbon in their biomass. Understanding how management, such as thinning or harvesting, affects this storage is crucial for sustainable practices and carbon credit schemes.
We compared managed and unmanaged forest patches, part of the INFORMA Forest Management Platform, in Belgium’s Brabantse Wouden National Park. Field measurements showed unmanaged forests store significantly more carbon (about 197 tons per hectare) than managed ones (around 144 tons per hectare). Unmanaged forests had fewer but larger trees, while managed forests had more small trees.
Subsequently, we built several predictive models using optical, radar and LiDAR data. Combining optical and radar data improved accuracy compared to using optical data alone, reducing errors by about 40%. Surprisingly, adding canopy height from LiDAR data did not significantly enhance predictions. Despite the good general biomass predictions (R² of 0.72), the remote sensing model failed to detect the carbon stock differences between managed and unmanaged forests observed in the field. Likely reasons include signal saturation in dense forests, limited training data, and high model uncertainty.
Remote sensing can estimate forest carbon stocks reasonably well, especially when combining optical and radar data, but it still struggles to capture subtle differences caused by management. More refined methods and larger datasets are needed for reliable monitoring at scale.
Lay Summary: to be added
Lay Summary:
This study investigates how increasingly large forest fires, driven by climate warming, impact surface temperatures in northern temperate and boreal forests. Forest fires have grown significantly in size over recent decades, especially in Canada, the USA, and Australia, where average fire sizes have doubled or even tripled. Fires not only release carbon and other particles into the atmosphere but also influence energy and water exchanges between land and air, which can impact local climates.
Using satellite data, researchers found that larger fires consistently led to more warming of the land surface during summer, lasting for about a decade post-fire. This warming effect was more pronounced in areas dominated by coniferous trees, which are more vulnerable to fire than broadleaf trees. In regions with a higher proportion of broadleaf trees, which are less flammable, the warming effect was reduced.
The study highlights that this fire-driven warming could impact the regeneration of forests and accelerate permafrost degradation, potentially creating additional climate feedback loops that were previously underestimated. As northern forests are expected to experience larger fires in the future, the authors suggest adopting climate-smart forestry practices. These could include increasing the presence of broadleaf trees in fire-prone areas and avoiding tree species that are particularly susceptible to fire, which may help mitigate the climate impacts of these larger fires.
Lay Summary:
How trees survive drought: Strategies and adaptations
How do trees survive during severe droughts? What strategies do they use to cope with the lack of water? Building on research by Camille Ziegler and colleagues, this insight article explores the key factors that cause trees to dry out during droughts, and the cascade of adjustments trees can use to mitigate drought stress.
Trees dry out during droughts because they can’t absorb enough water from the soil to balance the water they lose through their leaves and bark. Trees adjust to drought in responses that are triggered in order of reversibility: first the most elastic ones, such as stomatal closure, and then the least reversible ones, such as stopping leaf growth or leaf area loss. These actions help slow down the drying process and give trees more time before they reach a critical point of dehydration.
We conclude by pointing out three avenues for future research. These focus on understanding the benefits and drawbacks of these strategies in terms of how trees get carbon, use water, and survive. This knowledge is especially important as the world becomes warmer and drier.
In summary, trees use various strategies to manage water loss and survive during droughts. Understanding these strategies is crucial to anticipate how forests will cope with climate change.
Lay Summary:
Understanding how bark beetle outbreaks affect forest health and carbon storage in a changing climate
Climate change is bringing about new conditions that can lead to more frequent and severe natural disturbances in forests, such as windstorms, forest fires, and insect outbreaks. These disturbances can significantly impact forests’ ability to absorb and store carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. In some cases, forests might even start releasing more CO2 than they absorb, turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources.
To better understand these potential changes, our study focused on improving a computer model called ORCHIDEE, which simulates how forests respond to climate change. We specifically looked at how outbreaks of bark beetles, which can kill large numbers of trees, affect forest health and carbon storage.
We used a previously developed bark beetle model and adapted it for ORCHIDEE, making adjustments for differences in how ORCHIDEE handles space, time, and other forest processes like wind damage and drought. Our enhanced model was able to simulate various scenarios based on real observations, such as:
1. Forests resisting bark beetle infestations even after windstorms.
2. Gradual shifts (over 3-7 years) from low to high bark beetle populations following medium-strength windstorms in colder areas.
3. Rapid shifts (within 1-3 years) from low to high bark beetle populations after strong windstorms.
Although all simulated forests eventually recovered from these disturbances, the recovery time varied from 5 to 10 years depending on the severity and type of disturbance.
An important change in our new model is how it handles tree mortality. Instead of seeing mortality as a gradual, ongoing process, we now simulate it as sudden events, like a bark beetle outbreak killing many trees at once. This new approach gave us better insights into how much carbon forests can store in the short term and revealed that previous models might have overestimated this potential.
Overall, our work improves the ORCHIDEE model’s ability to predict how forests might respond to climate change and disturbances, providing valuable information for managing and preserving forest ecosystems.
Lay Summary:
The importance of cultural benefits in Sustainable Forest Management in Romania
Forests provide many benefits beyond just resources like wood and clean air. They also offer cultural ecosystem services (CES), which include aesthetic experiences, opportunities to gain knowledge and skills, spiritual enrichment, and engagement in nature conservation. These cultural benefits play a crucial role in preserving all forms of life by promoting a deeper connection between people and nature.
Our study focuses on how these CES are integrated into forest management in Romania, particularly in forests managed by private districts. In Romania, forest management recognizes various ecosystem services, such as protection and production, and incorporates them into forest planning and policy. This includes aligning forest management with the protection of natural areas and meeting standards set by the Forest Stewardship Council(FSC).
However, CES face challenges, mainly due to a lack of clear concepts and limits of monetization in protecting ecosystem services, which makes it difficult to assess and integrate them into forest and landscape planning. Through our analysis, we found that forests with cultural roles often include those near cultural or heritage buildings like churches and monasteries, or those with significant aesthetic and recreational values.
Forest management certification, using straightforward methods, helps identify forests with cultural roles. This is particularly useful when forest management plans overlook these aspects due to zoning limitations. Our study showed that over 40% of cultural forests serve recreational and ecotourism purposes, while about 18% have spiritual or religious significance.
Although we identified seven types of cultural ecosystem services, the diversity of cultural services cannot be fully captured at the national level without considering indigenous populations. Nevertheless, our study suggests that expanding the research could help identify more forests with inspirational or aesthetic value, which are appreciated at the landscape level.
In summary, acknowledging and integrating cultural ecosystem services into forest management can enhance sustainable practices and ensure that forests continue to provide valuable cultural benefits to society.
Lay Summary:
The challenges of restoring ecosystems in a rapidly changing world
Our planet’s ecosystems are undergoing rapid and significant changes due to human activities such as land use changes and the burning of fossil fuels. These actions have led to increased greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, creating stressful conditions for many natural and human systems that have not yet adapted to the new environment.
Land degradation is a growing issue, making it urgent to restore and reshape ecosystems to ensure they continue to provide essential services. However, this task is complicated by the uncertainty of future climate conditions, which are likely to be very different from today’s.
To address these challenges, many initiatives and projects are being launched to help ecosystems adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change. For example, large-scale tree planting projects aim to restore deforested or degraded areas while capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Increasing biomass and storing carbon in the soil through these projects could help to mitigate and reduce climate change impacts. However, planting trees alone is not solving climate change challenges. We have to dramatically reduce our emissions.
Monitoring these restoration efforts is crucial. We need tools to track and prioritize actions, as well as to learn from them by identifying what works and what doesn’t. This is essential for learning and correcting mistakes and ensuring that our efforts are effective, especially given the rapidly changing environmental conditions.
In summary, restoring ecosystems in the face of climate change is a complex but essential task. Through careful planning, monitoring, and adaptation, we can improve the resilience of our natural environments and help to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Lay Summary:
Understanding Tree Species Association in Romanian Broadleaf Forests
In forests, different tree species can either help each other out or compete for environmental resources. Understanding these species associations helps us learn more about how forests function and how we can protect them. Our study looked at tree associations in a broadleaf forest in Romania using three methods to see co-occurrence patterns.
We found that some trees, like ash and linden, tend to tolerate each other, showing positive associations. Overall, positive associations (attraction) were more common than negative ones (repulsion). On larger scales, we saw more positive associations among tree species than on smaller scales.
Each method gave us a different perspective. The presence or absence method was simple and gave us general results, requiring less detailed sampling but providing solid results about where trees are located. The abundance analysis was less consistent and sometimes unclear in showing patterns of species association. The distance analysis was the most detailed, revealing specific patterns of how close or far apart different species tend to be, allowing us to see refined interactions based on their distances.
In summary, our study shows that trees in Romanian broadleaf forests often form associations that can vary depending on the spatial perspective. This information is important for managing and preserving forests, ensuring they stay healthy and diverse.
Lay Summary:
Improving the management of Aleppo Pine forests amidst rural abandonment, climate change, and wildfires
Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis Mill.) is a crucial tree species in the Mediterranean region, thriving in lowland forests on limestone soils under semi-arid to sub-humid conditions. Known for its resilience and adaptability, Aleppo pine plays a vital role in mitigating climate change and holds significant industrial value. Effective management of these forests can enhance their quality and productivity, while also supporting environmental and social goals.
However, there is limited scientific understanding of how different forest management practices affect Aleppo pine stands. Our study aims to fill this gap by comparing four different treatments: light thinning, strong thinning, transformation to uneven-aged stands, and diameter-driven uneven-aged management. We evaluated these treatments in terms of tree growth, vulnerability to extreme weather, resilience, regeneration, and shrub cover across 12 research plots, each 0.49 hectares in size, with three plots for each treatment. These were compared to three non-managed control plots.
Our findings indicate that light and strong thinning treatments enhance tree growth and stock, outperforming standard growth expectations. The transformation to uneven-aged stands maintains consistent growth and regeneration, offering stability and an effective strategy for forests on steep slopes or for small landowners seeking balanced age distribution among trees. The diameter-driven uneven-aged treatment initially increases vulnerability to extreme weather and reduces tree stock but promotes faster and taller tree regeneration.
Additionally, we observed a dual regeneration pattern in the shrub Ulex parviflorus Pourr., particularly following significant tree cover reduction due to the transformation into uneven-aged stands. This regeneration is crucial for forest recovery after wildfires.
A longer observation period, extending beyond a decade, is necessary to fully validate these early conclusions. Our research underscores the importance of tailored forest management practices to improve the resilience and productivity of Aleppo pine forests, especially in the face of rural abandonment, climate change, and wildfire threats.
Lay Summary:
Tropical Cyclones Help Forests Recover From Dry Spells in East Asia
Tropical cyclones are often seen as destructive forces that damage forests, especially through strong winds that reduce the leaf area of trees. Most studies focus on the damage caused by particularly powerful cyclones, which can bias our understanding of their overall impact on forests. Our study takes a different approach by examining the tracks of 140 cyclones and analyzing changes in forest leaf area using satellite data, alongside climate records.
Surprisingly, we found that 34% of the cyclones actually led to an increase in forest leaf area, while only 18% resulted in a decrease, and 48% showed no significant change. The increase in leaf area was observed in cases where the cyclone’s path was influenced by a specific atmospheric pressure pattern, known as a dipole. This dipole not only directed the cyclone but also created dry conditions in the region. The heavy rainfall from the cyclone then helped the forests recover more quickly from the dry spell than areas not affected by the cyclone.
Our findings reveal an unexpected positive interaction between tropical cyclones and droughts. While cyclones can cause immediate damage, their rainfall can also aid forest recovery in dry conditions, highlighting a complex relationship between these natural events and forest health. This new understanding can help improve how we manage and protect forests in regions frequently hit by tropical cyclones.
Declaration of generative AI use in lay summary writing
“ChatGPT” was used for adapting and simplifying the abstracts of the respective scientific articles into lay language. The content of this page has been checked for accuracy and correctness by the authors of each article.