Abstract
Forest disturbances are sensitive to climate. However, our understanding of disturbance dynamics in response to climatic changes remains incomplete, particularly regarding large-scale patterns, interaction effects and dampening feedbacks. Here we provide a global synthesis of climate change effects on important abiotic (fire, drought, wind, snow and ice) and biotic (insects and pathogens) disturbance agents. Warmer and drier conditions particularly facilitate fire, drought and insect disturbances, while warmer and wetter conditions increase disturbances from wind and pathogens. Widespread interactions between agents are likely to amplify disturbances, while indirect climate effects such as vegetation changes can dampen long-term disturbance sensitivities to climate. Future changes in disturbance are likely to be most pronounced in coniferous forests and the boreal biome. We conclude that both ecosystems and society should be prepared for an increasingly disturbed future of forests.
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Acknowledgements
This work is the result of a working group within the European Union (EU) COST Action PROFOUND (FP1304) and the IUFRO Task Force on Climate Change and Forest Health. R.S. acknowledges funding from a START grant of the Austrian Science Fund FWF (Y 895-B25). M.K. acknowledges funding from the EU FP7 project LUC4C, grant 603542. M.Peltoniemi was funded by EU Life+ (LIFE12 ENV/FI/000409). C.P.O.R. acknowledges funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, grant no. 01LS1201A1). D.M.-B. was funded by a Marie-Curie IEF grant (EU grant 329935). J.W. was funded by the long-term research and development project RVO 67985939 (The Czech Academy of Sciences). M.S., V.T. and J.W. acknowledge support from a project of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports no. LD15158. M.Petr acknowledges funding support from Forestry Commission (UK) funded research on climate change impacts. J.H. acknowledges funding from the Foundation for Research of Natural Resources in Finland, grant no. 2015090. M.S. and V.T. acknowledge funding from the project GAČR 15-14840S “EXTEMIT - K”, no. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000433 financed by OP RDE.
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R.S. and C.P.O.R. initiated the research. R.S. and D.T. designed the study, with feedback from all authors during workshops in Vienna, Austria (April 2015) and Novi Sad, Serbia (November 2015). G.V., D.A., P.M., C.P.O.R. and R.S. reviewed the fire literature. D.M.-B., M.Petr and V.T. reviewed the drought literature. J.W., M.J.L., M.F. and T.N. reviewed the wind literature. D.T. and T.N. reviewed the snow and ice literature. M.K., D.T., M.J.L., M.S. and J.W. reviewed the literature on insects. M.Peltoniemi, J.H. and M.Petr reviewed the literature on pathogens. R.S. conducted the analyses. All authors contributed to writing and revising the manuscript.
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Seidl, R., Thom, D., Kautz, M. et al. Forest disturbances under climate change. Nature Clim Change 7, 395–402 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3303
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3303
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