Evaluating resilience of tree communities in fragmented landscapes: linking functional response diversity with landscape connectivity

Craven, Dylan; Filotas, Élise; Angers, Virginie A.; Messier, Christian

doi:10.1111/ddi.12423

Cited by 53 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 107 publications

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“…Our findings of strong landscape-scale drivers of resilience are important as they complement previous assessments of Norway spruce resilience at the tree and stand scale, identifying stand age and density (Seidl et al 2017b) as well as site conditions, most notably water availability (Boden et al 2014;Zang et al 2014) as the key drivers of resilience to climate change. Consequently, the consideration of multiple spatial scales is crucial for a comprehensive assessment of ecosystem resilience (Craven et al 2016). In this context it is noteworthy that effects of individual processes on resilience can vary on different spatial scales.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Norway spruce at the trailing edge: the effect of landscape configuration and composition on climate resilience

2020

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Context Norway spruce (Picea abies) is one of the most widespread tree species in Europe's forests. Due to its high economic value it has been strongly favored by management, especially at the trailing edge of its natural distribution. However, disturbances from wind and bark beetles are increasingly impacting these forests, and their resilience under climate change has been called into question recently. Objectives We quantified the effects of landscape configuration and composition on (1) the risk from natural disturbances, and (2) on the overall resilience of Norway spruce to changing climate at the trailing edge. Methods We simulated the dynamics of a 9183 ha forest landscape in Eastern Austria over 190 years. We used the simulation model iLand to experimentally study a wide range of landscape compositions and configurations under five different climate scenarios. Results Natural disturbances increased considerably under all future climate scenarios. Dispersing Norway spruce throughout the landscape in mixed stands resulted in the highest levels of climate resilience. Reducing the percentage of Norway spruce on the landscape increased the resilience of the remaining Norway spruce trees, yet landscape configuration generally had a stronger effect on resilience than composition. Conclusions The resilience of Norway spruce at the trailing edge of its distribution is challenged by climate change, and considerable efforts are needed to sustain these ecosystems. While currently discussed adaptation measures focus largely on the stand level, we show that modifying landscape composition and configuration can be used to foster Norway spruce resilience while maintaining socioeconomically relevant proportions of Norway spruce.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Norway spruce at the trailing edge: the effect of landscape configuration and composition on climate resilience

2020

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“…For instance, Higgins and Scheiter () showed that the impacts of abrupt, small‐scale regime shifts in vegetation cover are decreased at a landscape‐level due to their asynchrony and Craven et al. () demonstrated how interactions between local response diversity and habitat connectivity affect landscape‐level resilience of a temperate forest. Furthermore, a multi‐trophic, large‐scale study recently showed that ecosystem functioning drivers at small scales likely differ from those at larger scales: while identity and niche complementarity effects drove small‐scale ecosystem productivity, ecosystem functioning at larger scales was only directly associated with total biomass and species richness (Barnes et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Response diversity, functional redundancy, and post‐logging productivity in northern temperate and boreal forests

Correia

Raulier

Bouchard

et al. 2018

Ecological Applications

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The development of efficient ecosystem resilience indicators was identified as one of the key research priorities in the improvement of existing sustainable forest management frameworks. Two indicators of tree diversity associated with ecosystem functioning have recently received particular attention in the literature: functional redundancy (FR) and response diversity (RD). We examined how these indicators could be used to predict post-logging productivity in forests of Québec, Canada. We analysed the relationships between pre-logging FR and RD, as measured with sample plots, and post-logging productivity, measured as seasonal variation in enhanced vegetation index obtained from MODIS satellite imagery. The effects of the deciduous and coniferous tree components in our pre-disturbance diversity assessments were isolated in order to examine the hypothesis that they have different impacts on post-disturbance productivity. We also examined the role of tree species richness and species identity effects. Our analysis revealed the complementary nature of traditional biodiversity indicators and trait-based approaches in the study of biodiversity-ecosystem-functioning relationships in dynamic ecosystems. We report a significant and positive relationship between pre-disturbance deciduous RD and post-disturbance productivity, as well as an unexpected significant negative effect of coniferous RD on productivity. This negative relationship with post-logging productivity likely results from slower coniferous regeneration speeds and from the relatively short temporal scale examined. Negative black-spruce-mediated identity effects were likely associated with increased stand vulnerability to paludification and invasion by ericaceous shrubs that slow down forest regeneration. Response diversity outperformed functional redundancy as a measure of post-disturbance productivity most likely due to the stand-replacing nature of the disturbance considered. To the best of our knowledge, this is among the first studies to report a negative significant relationship between a component of RD and ecosystem functioning, namely coniferous RD and forest ecosystem productivity after a stand-replacing disturbance.

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“…This is based on the recognition that adaptive capacity is necessary to allow forest ecosystems to respond to unexpected events and to continue ensuring the provision of desired functions and services (Puettmann 2014), especially in an increasingly uncertain future. This aspect is reflected in the appreciation of the value of variability and diversity as key components for adaptive capacity (Conrad 1983). Thus, they become prominent considerations in silvicultural prescriptions.…”

Section: Managing Forests As Complex Adaptive Systems: Overcoming Thementioning

confidence: 99%

The functional complex network approach to foster forest resilience to global changes

et al. 2019

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Human impacts on Earth's ecosystems have greatly intensified in the last decades. This is reflected in unexpected disturbance events, as well as new and increasing socio-economic demands, all of which are affecting the resilience of forest ecosystems worldwide and the provision of important ecosystem services. This Anthropocene era is forcing us to reconsider past and current forest management and silvicultural practices, and search for new ones that are more flexible and better at dealing with the increasing uncertainty brought about by these accelerating and cumulative global changes. Here, we briefly review the focus and limitations of past and current forest management and silvicultural practices mainly as developed in Europe and North America. We then discuss some recent promising concepts, such as managing forests as complex adaptive systems, and approaches based on resilience, functional diversity, assisted migration and multi-species plantations, to propose a novel approach to integrate the functionality of species-traits into a functional complex network approach as a flexible and multi-scale way to manage forests for the Anthropocene. This approach takes into consideration the high level of uncertainty associated with future environmental and societal changes. It relies on the quantification and dynamic monitoring of functional diversity and complex network indices to manage forests as a functional complex network. Using this novel approach, the most efficient forest management and silvicultural practices can be determined, as well as where, at what scale, and at what intensity landscape-scale resistance, resilience and adaptive capacity of forests to global changes can be improved.

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Evaluating resilience of tree communities in fragmented landscapes: linking functional response diversity with landscape connectivity

Cited by 53 publications

References 107 publications

Norway spruce at the trailing edge: the effect of landscape configuration and composition on climate resilience

Norway spruce at the trailing edge: the effect of landscape configuration and composition on climate resilience

Response diversity, functional redundancy, and post‐logging productivity in northern temperate and boreal forests

The functional complex network approach to foster forest resilience to global changes

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