Competition alters tree growth responses to climate at individual and stand scales

Ford, Kevin R.; Breckheimer, Ian; Franklin, Jerry F.; Freund, James A.; Kroiss, Steve J.; Larson, Andrew J.; Theobald, Elli J.; HilleRisLambers, Janneke

doi:10.1139/cjfr-2016-0188

Cited by 92 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Regarding the choice of climatic variables in the analyses, we acknowledge that the use of climate data of the current year might obscure lagged effects of previous-year conditions. Furthermore, we stress that our results concern the growth of individual (co-)dominant trees and acknowledge that environmental or management effects on suppressed trees may be different (Coomes & Allen, 2007;Ford et al, 2017;Meyer & Bräker, 2017). Furthermore, we stress that our results concern the growth of individual (co-)dominant trees and acknowledge that environmental or management effects on suppressed trees may be different (Coomes & Allen, 2007;Ford et al, 2017;Meyer & Bräker, 2017).…”

Section: Implications For Future Tree Growthmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…Masting events could also have affected tree growth and climate-growth relationships (e.g., Hacket-Pain, Friend, Lageard, & Thomas, 2015), but unfortunately we did not have data on masting in our plots. Furthermore, we stress that our results concern the growth of individual (co-)dominant trees and acknowledge that environmental or management effects on suppressed trees may be different (Coomes & Allen, 2007;Ford et al, 2017;Meyer & Bräker, 2017). A drawback of our study is that we could only consider management history for Quercus here, hence the potential role of forest management for the other study species' tree growth remains unknown.…”

Section: Implications For Future Tree Growthmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Environmental drivers interactively affect individual tree growth across temperate European forests

Maes

Perring

Vanhellemont

et al. 2018

Global Change Biology

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Forecasting the growth of tree species to future environmental changes requires a better understanding of its determinants. Tree growth is known to respond to global‐change drivers such as climate change or atmospheric deposition, as well as to local land‐use drivers such as forest management. Yet, large geographical scale studies examining interactive growth responses to multiple global‐change drivers are relatively scarce and rarely consider management effects. Here, we assessed the interactive effects of three global‐change drivers (temperature, precipitation and nitrogen deposition) on individual tree growth of three study species (Quercus robur/petraea, Fagus sylvatica and Fraxinus excelsior). We sampled trees along spatial environmental gradients across Europe and accounted for the effects of management for Quercus. We collected increment cores from 267 trees distributed over 151 plots in 19 forest regions and characterized their neighbouring environment to take into account potentially confounding factors such as tree size, competition, soil conditions and elevation. We demonstrate that growth responds interactively to global‐change drivers, with species‐specific sensitivities to the combined factors. Simultaneously high levels of precipitation and deposition benefited Fraxinus, but negatively affected Quercus’ growth, highlighting species‐specific interactive tree growth responses to combined drivers. For Fagus, a stronger growth response to higher temperatures was found when precipitation was also higher, illustrating the potential negative effects of drought stress under warming for this species. Furthermore, we show that past forest management can modulate the effects of changing temperatures on Quercus’ growth; individuals in plots with a coppicing history showed stronger growth responses to higher temperatures. Overall, our findings highlight how tree growth can be interactively determined by global‐change drivers, and how these growth responses might be modulated by past forest management. By showing future growth changes for scenarios of environmental change, we stress the importance of considering multiple drivers, including past management and their interactions, when predicting tree growth.

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Section: Implications For Future Tree Growthmentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: Implications For Future Tree Growthmentioning

confidence: 97%

Environmental drivers interactively affect individual tree growth across temperate European forests

Maes

Perring

Vanhellemont

et al. 2018

Global Change Biology

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“…We considered the proportion of clay, sand, and silt in the mineral soil, organic layer thickness (OLT), and hydrological conditions of the sample plot assessed as drainage classes. A tree-level competition index (CI) was computed as the number of trees that were taller than the focal tree, divided by the total number of trees within the plot, to assess asymmetric competition (Ford et al, 2016), following Weber, Bugmann, Fonti, and Rigling (2008). For standlevel demographic features, stand age was defined as the age of the oldest sampled tree in the plot.…”

Section: Climate Data and Explanatory Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By modifying resource availability, interindividual competition can exacerbate tree sensitivity to harsh climatic conditions (Buechling, Martin, & Canham, 2017;Ford et al, 2016;Gleason et al, 2017;Jiang et al, 2018;Nicklen et al, 2018) or buffer growth gains from favorable periods (Cortini, Comeau, & Bokalo, 2012). Ultimately, the capacity of a tree to efficiently use resources will also dictate its response to climate (Carrer & Urbinati, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taxonomy, together with ontogeny and growing conditions, drives needleleaf species' sensitivity to climate in boreal North America

Marchand

Girardin

Hartmann

et al. 2019

Global Change Biology

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Currently, there is no consensus regarding the way that changes in climate will affect boreal forest growth, where warming is occurring faster than in other biomes. Some studies suggest negative effects due to drought‐induced stresses, while others provide evidence of increased growth rates due to a longer growing season. Studies focusing on the effects of environmental conditions on growth–climate relationships are usually limited to small sampling areas that do not encompass the full range of environmental conditions; therefore, they only provide a limited understanding of the processes at play. Here, we studied how environmental conditions and ontogeny modulated growth trends and growth–climate relationships of black spruce (Picea mariana) and jack pine (Pinus banksiana) using an extensive dataset from a forest inventory network. We quantified the long‐term growth trends at the stand scale, based on analysis of the absolutely dated ring‐width measurements of 2,266 trees. We assessed the relationship between annual growth rates and seasonal climate variables and evaluated the effects of various explanatory variables on long‐term growth trends and growth–climate relationships. Both growth trends and growth–climate relationships were species‐specific and spatially heterogeneous. While the growth of jack pine barely increased during the study period, we observed a growth decline for black spruce which was more pronounced for older stands. This decline was likely due to a negative balance between direct growth gains induced by improved photosynthesis during hotter‐than‐average growing conditions in early summers and the loss of growth occurring the following year due to the indirect effects of late‐summer heat waves on accumulation of carbon reserves. For stands at the high end of our elevational gradient, frost damage during milder‐than‐average springs could act as an additional growth stressor. Competition and soil conditions also modified climate sensitivity, which suggests that effects of climate change will be highly heterogeneous across the boreal biome.

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“…Few studies, however, have measured fitness components across environmental gradients while also quantifying the effects of local biotic interactions (Clark et al 2011, Ehrl en andMorris 2015). As a consequence, we have a limited understanding of demographic responses to environmental heterogeneity across broad scales (but see Clark et al 2011, G omez-Aparicio et al 2011, Canham and Murphy 2016, Ford et al 2016 Reich 2017 for some exceptions).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of biotic interactions on tropical tree performance depend on abiotic conditions

Muscarella

Messier

Condit

et al. 2018

Ecology

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Predicting biotic responses to environmental change requires understanding the joint effects of abiotic conditions and biotic interactions on community dynamics. One major challenge is to separate the potentially confounding effects of abiotic environmental variation and local biotic interactions on individual performance. The stress gradient hypothesis (SGH) addresses this issue directly by predicting that the effects of biotic interactions on performance become more positive as the abiotic environment becomes more stressful. It is unclear, however, how the predictions of the SGH apply to plants of differing functional strategies in diverse communities. We asked (1) how the effect of crowding on performance (growth and survival) of trees varies across a precipitation gradient, and (2) how functional strategies (as measured by two key traits: wood density and leaf mass per area, LMA) mediate average demographic rates and responses to crowding across the gradient. We built trait‐based neighborhood models of growth and survival across a regional precipitation gradient where increasing precipitation is associated with reduced abiotic stress. In total, our dataset comprised ~170,000 individual trees belonging to 252 species. The effect of crowding on tree performance varied across the gradient; crowding negatively affected growth across plots and positively affected survival in the wettest plot. Functional traits mediated average demographic rates across the gradient, but we did not find clear evidence that the strength of these responses depends on species’ traits. Our study lends support to the SGH and demonstrates how a trait‐based perspective can advance these concepts by linking the diversity of species interactions with functional variation across abiotic gradients.

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Competition alters tree growth responses to climate at individual and stand scales

Cited by 92 publications

References 40 publications

Environmental drivers interactively affect individual tree growth across temperate European forests

Environmental drivers interactively affect individual tree growth across temperate European forests

Taxonomy, together with ontogeny and growing conditions, drives needleleaf species' sensitivity to climate in boreal North America

Effects of biotic interactions on tropical tree performance depend on abiotic conditions

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