Assessing the persistence capacity of communities facing natural disturbances on the basis of species response traits

Abstract

Està subjecte a una llicència de Reconeixement-NoComercial-SenseObraDerivada 4.0 de Creative Commons This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Ecological Indicators.

Forest management for adaptation to climate change in the Mediterranean basin: A synthesis of evidence

“…uneven-aged forests). There is growing interest towards managing for forest diversification given that mixed forests may exhibit greater resistance and recovery capacity as a consequence of niche partitioning and differential response to stressors (de-Dios-García et al, 2015;del Río et al, 2017;Sánchez-Pinillos et al, 2016). Uneven-aged forests are also expected to show higher stability to disturbances (Regos et al, 2016), while the conservation of key areas within landscapes might increase not only the spatial heterogeneity but also the potential for adaptation through the conservation of genetic sources, favouring ecological connectivity and dispersal processes (Lindenmayer et al, 2012).…”

Knowledge gaps about mixed forests: What do European forest managers want to know and what answers can science provide?

“…The higher resilience of mixtures to severe disturbances might be mediated by the higher diversity and higher redundancy of traits relevant to tree response to environmental changes (e.g. resprouting capacity, seed bank longevity) that these stands may present (Yachi and Loreau, 1999;Puettmann, 2011;Sánchez-Pinillos et al, 2016).…”

“…From a management perspective, promoting the coexistence of species belonging to different functional groups and/or with different strategies to face disturbances (to increase the probability of recovery processes) seems a good starting point (Sánchez-Pinillos et al, 2016). This mostly translates into trying to maintain the inherent complexity of forests, i.e.…”

Avoiding ecosystem collapse in managed forest ecosystems

“…As an example, simulation studies by Westerling et al (2011) suggest that elevated fire frequency over the next century resulting from climate change may promote the transformation of conifer forests to more open vegetation in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Wyoming. Under such conditions, the planting of fireresistant or -resilient tree species may be necessary as a mitigation strategy (eg Aubin et al 2016;Sánchez-Pinillosa et al 2016).…”