Cold-season freeze frequency is a pervasive driver of subcontinental forest growth

Girardin, Martin P.; Guo, Xingqi; Gervais, David; Campbell, Elizabeth M.; Arsenault, André; Isaac-Renton, Miriam; Hogg, Edward H.

doi:10.1073/pnas.2117464119

Cited by 21 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…We instead found a negative relationship between tree growth and suitability that has been consistent over time for gymnosperms and tended to strengthen through time for angiosperms. However, even within the two phyla, growth–suitability relationships were highly variable among species supporting previous findings on the variability of species' responses to environmental variables (Girardin et al 2022).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…disturbances or local conditions). Indeed, several studies have shown that tree growth rates are stable or decreasing through time at the population or community level (Feeley et al 2007, Clark et al 2010, Gómez‐Guerrero et al 2013, Giguère‐Croteau et al 2019), and even when analyzing species at different locations along environmental gradients (Silva et al 2010, Girardin et al 2016, Girardin et al 2022). A possible explanation for these conflicting results (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Changes in the climate suitability and growth rates of trees in eastern North America

2022

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According to the ‘fitness‐suitability' hypothesis, ongoing changes in climate are expected to affect habitat suitability and hence species' fitness. In trees, differences in fitness may manifest as changes in growth rates, which will alter carbon uptake. Using tree‐ring data, we calculated > 1.5 million annual stem growth rate estimates (standardized for tree size) for 15 677 trees representing 37 species from 558 populations throughout eastern North America. We used collections data and species distribution models to estimate each population's climatic suitability from 1900 to 2010. We then assessed the relationships between growth, suitability and time using linear mixed‐effects models. We found that stem growth rates decreased significantly through time independent of changes in climate suitability and that relationships between growth rates and climate suitability were highly variable across species. Contrary to expectations, we found that growth rates were negatively correlated with species' climate suitability, a relationship that was consistent over time for gymnosperms and became more negative through time for angiosperms. These results may suggest that stem growth rates are not a good proxy for fitness and/or that unidentified factors may be slowing tree growth and outweighing any potential benefits of climate change and increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Regardless of the cause, this finding indicates that we should not count on the increased growth of eastern North American trees to help offset anthropogenic carbon emissions.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changes in the climate suitability and growth rates of trees in eastern North America

2022

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“…However, it is difficult to represent drought tolerance in model simulations because drought‐induced mortality is the outcome of many interacting physiological processes driven by species‐specific traits (Gustafson et al, 2016). For example, while southern tree populations are tolerant to drought, they may be less frost‐tolerant and vulnerable to “cold snaps” at the beginning and end of the growing season (Girardin et al, 2022; Schreiber et al, 2013). If restoration focused on aspen, identifying southern populations that are also drought‐tolerant would increase the chances of restoration success (Gray et al, 2011; Landhäusser et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Oil sands restoration with warm‐adapted trees improves outcomes under moderate but not severe warming scenarios

Nenzén,

Boulanger,

Campbell

et al. 2023

Ecosphere

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Successful restoration of human‐disturbed landscapes and ecosystems will be increasingly compromised by the impacts of climate warming. Assisted migration and climate‐informed restoration, in which populations and species adapted to future climates are selected for restoration planting, have emerged as management tools to mitigate climate change effects. However, it is unclear whether climate‐informed restoration could offset the negative effects of climate change and enable successful restoration. We used a forest landscape model to evaluate the potential for reclamation activities to restore western Canadian boreal forest landscapes severely degraded by oil sands mining. We parametrized tree populations adapted to growing in warmer climates and then simulated the planting of local or southern tree populations under different climate change, mining, and wildfire disturbance scenarios. We found that planting trees better adapted to a warmer climate mitigated climate‐change and wildfire‐caused decreases in biomass across the landscape, but only under moderate climate change scenarios. The compensatory effect of planting populations adapted to warmer southern climates disappeared under a more severe climate change scenario. The advantage of planting southern populations also disappeared under wildfire scenarios, generally doubling the biomass loss compared with scenarios without wildfire. With wildfire and strong climate change effects, forest cover disappeared from much of the landscape, regardless of the planting scenario, causing it to change markedly from present‐day continuous boreal forest cover. We argue that such conditions would have large ecological and economic consequences. Scenario modeling with forest landscape models could be used as a tool to identify the long‐term success of restoration actions and to understand possible consequences of climate‐informed restoration.

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“…We found that Populus tremuloides demonstrated a different (warmer) ecological optimum than the physiological optimum, which agrees with Rehfeldt et al ( 2018 )’s finding in Pinus contorta . Populus tremuloides is a cold tolerate boreal deciduous tree distributed over a wide area (Girardin et al, 2022 ). Conservative growing strategies of avoiding frost damage were demonstrated with earlier senescence and onset of hardiness than the real frost temperature occurrence.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Evolutionary adaptation of the species is linked with the repeated recolonization from multiple refugia in the United States with those populations expanding to the current species range under a warming climate trend (Ding et al, 2017 ). P. tremuloides demonstrates discernible cold tolerance in the light of the climates they adapted to after the Last Glacier Maximum (Brouard, 2004 ; Ding et al, 2017 ; Girardin et al, 2022 ). The cooler ecological optimum of the species will not match current and future warmer climatic conditions, which could lead to maladaptation and potential decline of local populations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assisted migration is plausible for a boreal tree species under climate change: A quantitative and population genetics study of trembling aspen (Populus tremuloidesMichx.) in western Canada

Ding

Brouard²

2022

Ecology and Evolution

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A novel method was tested for improving tree breeding strategies that integrate quantitative and population genetics based on range‐wide reciprocal transplant experiments. Five reciprocal common garden tests of Populus tremuloides were investigated including 6450 trees across western Canada focusing on adaptation traits and growth. Both genetic parameters and home‐site transplant models were evaluated. We found a genetic trade‐off between growth and early spring leaf flush and late fall senescence. Coefficients of phenotypic variation ( CVp ) of cell lysis (CL), a measure of freezing injury, shrank from 0.28 to 0.10 during acclimation in the fall, and the CVp slope versus the freezing temperature was significantly different from zero ( R 2 = 0.33, p = .02). There was more between‐population genetic variation in fall phenology than in spring leaf phenology. We suggest that P. tremuloides demonstrated a discrepancy between the ecological optimum and the physiological optimum minimum winter temperature. The sub‐optimal growing condition of P. tremuloides is potentially caused by the warmer ecological optimum than the physiological optimum. Assisted migration and breeding of fast growers to reforest cooler plantation sites can improve productivity. Transferring the study populations to less than 4°C of extreme minimum temperature appears safe for reforestation aligning with the historical recolonization direction of the species. This is equivalent to a 5–10° latitudinal northward movement. Fall frost hardiness is an effective criterion for family selection in the range tested in this study.

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Cold-season freeze frequency is a pervasive driver of subcontinental forest growth

Cited by 21 publications

References 75 publications

Changes in the climate suitability and growth rates of trees in eastern North America

Changes in the climate suitability and growth rates of trees in eastern North America

Oil sands restoration with warm‐adapted trees improves outcomes under moderate but not severe warming scenarios

Assisted migration is plausible for a boreal tree species under climate change: A quantitative and population genetics study of trembling aspen (Populus tremuloidesMichx.) in western Canada

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