Response of Swiss forests to management and climate change in the last 60 years

Küchler, Meinrad; Küchler, Helen; Bedolla, Angéline; Wohlgemuth, Thomas

doi:10.1007/s13595-014-0409-x

Cited by 33 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Similarly, the path analysis indicates that thermophilization and drying are not mere artifacts from an increase in disturbance gaps, rendering sites more open to radiation and soil warming, but independent drivers of compositional changes in the herb layer. This confirms the results of previous works (Hedwall & Brunet, ; Küchler et al., ; Lenoir, Gégout, Dupouey, Bert, & Svenning, ; Savage & Vellend, ) which found indications of a climate driven floristic change in the understory of European forests. Canopy closure due to decreasing tree harvest and tree aging, which has the potential to buffer thermophilization of forest floor vegetation (De Frenne et al., ), is less significant in the study area because mature forest stands, where canopy closure is near its maximum level, predominate.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…This allows the study of compositional vegetation changes and to examine their possible environmental drivers. Some studies found evidence that forest floor vegetation has already responded to increasing temperatures (Küchler, Küchler, Bedolla, & Wohlgemuth, ; Lenoir, Gégout, Marquet, de Ruffray, & Brisse, ; Savage & Vellend, ). Several studies observed responses to increased soil N availability due to N deposition (Bernhardt‐Römermann et al., ; Brunet, Diekmann, & Falkengren‐Grerup, ; Diekmann, Brunet, Rühling, & Falkengren‐Grerup, ; Keith, Newton, Morecroft, Bealey, & Bullock, ; Naaf & Kolk, ; Reinecke et al., ; Thimonier, Dupouey, Bost, & Becker, ) and to acid rain (Diekmann et al., ; Hédl, ; Thimonier et al., ), while others report recovery from acidification in recent years (Reinecke et al., ; Vanhellemont, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Multiple environmental changes drive forest floor vegetation in a temperate mountain forest

Helm

Essl

Mirtl

et al. 2017

Ecology and Evolution

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Human‐induced changes of the environment and their possible impacts on temperate forest understory plant communities have been examined in many studies. However, the relative contribution of individual environmental factors to these changes in the herb layer is still unclear. In this study, we used vegetation survey data covering a time period of 21 years and collected from 143 permanent plots in the Northern Limestone Alps, Austria. Data on soil chemistry (49 plots), light condition (51 plots), soil temperature and moisture (four and six plots), disturbance (all plots), climate (one station in a clearing area), and airborne sulfur (S) and nitrogen (N) deposition (two forest stands) were available for analyses. We used these data together with plot mean Ellenberg indicator values in a path analysis to attribute their relative contributions to observed vegetation changes. Our analysis reveals a strong directional shift of the forest understory plant community. We found strong evidence for a recovery of the ground‐layer vegetation from acidification as response to decreased S deposition. We did not observe a community response to atmospheric N deposition, but we found a response to altered climatic conditions (thermophilization and drying). The path analysis revealed that changes in the light regime, which were related to small‐scale disturbances, had most influence on herb layer community shifts. Thermophilization and drying were identified as drivers of understory community changes independent of disturbance events.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple environmental changes drive forest floor vegetation in a temperate mountain forest

Helm

Essl

Mirtl

et al. 2017

Ecology and Evolution

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“…The forests close to the tree line are more open than the low-elevation forests and therefore profit from a mix of open grassland and forest species, increasing local SR. It is therefore likely that the warming and upslope migration of forest species will lead to a densification of the forest stands at higher elevations (Bodin et al, 2013;Küchler, Küchler, Bedolla, & Wohlgemuth, 2015), accentuated by pasture abandonment , leading to a reduction in SR in the longer term (Dullinger, Dirnbock, & Grabherr, 2004). Because forest plants seem to have difficulties to track their climate niche in geographic space (Bertrand, Lenoir, et al, 2011;Lenoir et al, 2008) and tree growth at the timber line is slow, there might be a considerable time-lag until the effects of forest densification are visible .…”

Section: Changes In Species Richnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing and predicting shifts in mountain forest composition across 25 years of climate change

Scherrer

Massy

Meier³

et al. 2017

Diversity and Distributions

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Aim: Spatial predictions of future communities under climate change can be obtained by stacking species distribution models (S-SDM), but proper evaluation of community S-SDM predictions across time with fully independent data has rarely been carried out. The aim of this study was to evaluate the predictive abilities of S-SDMs for whole forest communities across the last 25 years in a mountain region. Location:The western Swiss Alps. Methods:We used past vegetation surveys (2,984 plots) and environmental data from the 1990s to calibrate SDMs for 364 plant species and predict changes in forest composition under contemporary conditions. These projections were then evaluated by resurveying a random subset of 92 forest plots in summer 2014.Results: Species distribution models showed the same accuracy in the past (calibration data) and present (evaluation data). The S-SDMs correctly predicted the general trends in species richness and shift of ecological conditions (i.e., temperature, moisture) at the regional level. However, it proved more difficult to identify precisely which forest communities or areas are most or least affected by climate change.Main conclusion: Our results show that, across a period of a few decades, S-SDMs can usefully predict trends in macroecological properties such as richness or average ecological conditions, but fail to accurately predict changes in composition. This is likely due to the combined effects of the stochasticity of local colonization and extinction events, dispersal limitations, community assembly rules (e.g., competition), observer bias, model and location errors and interannual variation. Furthermore, these models cannot account for potential species adaptations leading to persistence in sites predicted unsuitable. This highlights the need for developing more accurate forest community predictions as support to help prioritizing conservation actions. K E Y W O R D Scommunity predictions, ecological indicator values, global warming, monitoring, plant community, species distribution models, Switzerland

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“…The faster recovery may result from lower competition after the cessation of disturbances (Suttle et al 2007) and reduced abiotic stress (e.g. more benign temperatures) at low elevations (Vittoz et al 2009, Küchler et al 2015. Additionally, the faster natural recovery of forests may be attributable to the seeds of low-elevation species generally recruiting faster than high-elevation ones (Kueppers et al 2017).…”

Section: Temporal and Elevational Patterns Of Forest Recoverymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological contingency in species shifts: downslope shifts of woody species under warming climate and land-use change

Zhang

Feeley

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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A predicted impact of a warming climate is an upslope shift of montane plant species. These upslope shifts may be amplified by land-use changes or attenuated by forest recoveries at low elevations where historical disturbances were ceased allowing for plant regrowth. Consequently, species may shift downslope back to low elevations where they had been previously harvested. The cessation-driven downslope shifts are hypothesized to dampen or even reverse climate-driven upslope shifts. We tested this hypothesis by a 20 year (1989-2009) forest inventory dataset from five mountainous areas in eastern China. In our study region, intense deforestation occurred mostly at low elevations until 1970, but was then ceased to facilitate natural forest recovery. Based on the analyses of 30 216 woody plants in 609 plots, we found that: (1) forest recovery occurred over the 20 year survey period, and increment rates of both recruitment and basal area increased up to 2004. However, in the last period (2004-2009), increment rates of basal area leveled off and recruitment was close to zero; (2) forest recovery was faster at lower elevations, as indicated by the higher increment rates there; (3) despite rising regional temperatures, the mean elevations of study species showed a downslope shift over the 20 years; and (4) the contribution of forest recovery to elevational shifts was supported by the fact that the species shifts were positively related to elevational changes in the recruitment increment, e.g. the negative (or downslope) shifts occurred in association with higher increments at lower elevations. These results suggest that, the cessation of disturbances and consequent lowland forest recovery had greater effects on the species distributions than did warming climate. In mountain systems that are being allowed to recover from historical disturbances, the effects of forest recovery on species distributions should be explicitly accounted for when assessing and predicting climate change impacts.

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Response of Swiss forests to management and climate change in the last 60 years

Cited by 33 publications

References 30 publications

Multiple environmental changes drive forest floor vegetation in a temperate mountain forest

Multiple environmental changes drive forest floor vegetation in a temperate mountain forest

Assessing and predicting shifts in mountain forest composition across 25 years of climate change

Ecological contingency in species shifts: downslope shifts of woody species under warming climate and land-use change

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