Forest resilience under global environmental change: Do we have the information we need? A systematic review

Abstract

The capacity of forests to recover after disturbance, i.e., their resilience, determines their ability to persist and function over time. Many variables, natural and managerial, affect forest resilience. Thus, understanding their effects is critical for the development of sound forest conservation and management strategies, especially in the context of ongoing global environmental changes. We conducted a representative review, meta-analysis, of the forest literature in this topic (search terms “forest AND resilience”). We aimed to identify natural conditions that promote or jeopardize resilience, assess the efficacy of post-disturbance management practices on forest recovery, and evaluate forest resilience under current environmental changes.We surveyed more than 2,500 articles and selected the 156 studies (724 observations) that compared and quantified forest recovery after disturbance under different contexts. Context of recovery included: resource gradients (moisture and fertility), post-disturbance biomass reduction treatments, species richness gradients, incidence of a second disturbance, and disturbance severity. Metrics of recovery varied from individual tree growth and reproduction, to population abundance, to species richness and cover. Analyses show management practices only favored recovery through increased reproduction (seed production) and abundance of recruitment stages. Higher moisture conditions favored recovery, particularly in dry temperate regions; and in boreal forests, this positive effect increased with regional humidity. Biomass reduction treatments were only effective in increasing resilience after a drought. Early recruiting plant stages benefited from increased severity, while disturbance severity was associated with lower recovery of remaining adult trees. This quantitative review provides insight into the natural conditions and management practices under which forest resilience is enhanced and highlights conditions that could jeopardize future resilience. We also identified important knowledge gaps, such as the role of diversity in determining forest resilience and the lack of data in many regions.

Network analysis can guide resilience‐based management in forest landscapes under global change

“…This corroborates our third hypothesis that current management practices are not suitable for fostering forest resilience in an uncertain future. These results are in line with studies carried out in several regions of the world, indicating that current management practices are not appropriate to cope with challenges at local and regional scales (Creutzburg et al 2017, Mina et al 2017, Ibáñez et al 2019) and that only substantial shifts in forest practices might be effective in promoting resilience under rapid climate and global change (Duveneck and Scheller 2016, Lucash et al 2017). In the case of fragmented landscapes, maintaining species and traits diversity has been shown to be key for ecosystem functioning, particularly under a changing climate (Ratcliffe et al 2017, Hertzog et al 2019).…”

Assessing vulnerability and resistance to plant invasions: a native community perspective

“…We used a hierarchical Bayesian approach to be able to incorporate missing variances as latent variables (Ibáñez et al 2019). Missing variances were estimated by sampling from normal distributions (limited to be positive) with an SD of 1, with mean being the largest variance among observations with reported variance; this is the most conservative, lowest bias, imputation method to deal with missing variances (Batson and Burton 2016).…”

Drought Resistance of Norway Spruce (Picea abies [L.] Karst) and European Beech (Fagus sylvatica [L.]) in Mixed vs. Monospecific Stands and on Dry vs. Wet Sites. From Evidence at the Tree Level to Relevance at the Stand Level

“…Although the tree size has been positively associated with growth under normal conditions [87,88], responses might differ under drought conditions. Size heterogeneity may play an important role in the whole stand growth post-drought as the smaller trees recover faster [1] and have also been found to be more resilient and resistant than the larger trees [18]. Tree mortality around the globe due to drought conditions has been found to be higher in case of larger trees than that of smaller trees [89,90].…”

“…The long term functionality of forest stands is determined by their capacity to resist and recover after disturbance [1]. Due to climate change, forest ecosystems might be prone to more frequent and severe biotic and abiotic disturbances [2], leading to increased mortality in the future [3,4].…”