Forest ecology articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • Research Briefing |

    Earthquakes not only affect tree growth directly by causing physical injury to individual trees but also indirectly by inducing changes in forest habitats. We established linkage between tree-ring series and seismic disturbances and found that prominent and lasting seismic legacies in drier areas may be due to an increased infiltration of precipitation through earthquake-induced soil cracks.

  • Article |

    Carbon sequestration by Siberian forests has been low over the past decade due to disturbances that have decreased live biomass and increased dead wood, according to passive microwave observations.

    • Lei Fan
    • , Jean-Pierre Wigneron
    •  & Rasmus Fensholt

  • Research Briefing |

    Anthropogenic nitrogen deposition is known to affect forest soil respiration, but it remains unclear how soil respiration responds to nitrogen deposition over time. Monitoring of CO2 emissions over 9–13 years of nitrogen-addition treatments in three tropical forests in southern China reveals a three-phase pattern of soil respiration.

  • News & Views |

    Bedrock composition can play a critical role in determining the structure and water demand of forests, influencing their vulnerability to drought. The properties of bedrock can help explain within-region patterns of tree mortality in the 2011–2017 California drought.

    • Christina Tague

  • Article |

    Spatial variability in forest dieback during the severe drought in California between 2011 and 2017 can be explained by variations in bedrock composition and thus weatherability, according to analyses of the drought responses a series of geologically distinct sites.

    • Russell P. Callahan
    • , Clifford S. Riebe
    •  & W. Steven Holbrook

  • Editorial |

    Meeting climate targets will require considerable carbon dioxide removal in addition to emission cuts. To achieve this sustainably, a range of methods are needed to avoid adverse effects and match co-benefits with local needs.

  • Review Article |

    Fires reduce plant biomass, which should deplete soil carbon stocks, but a review of recent literature shows that fires also slow decomposition rates and increase soil organic matter stability, offsetting aboveground biomass carbon losses.

    • Adam F. A. Pellegrini
    • , Jennifer Harden
    •  & Robert B. Jackson

  • Article |

    Elephant disturbance favours the emergence of larger trees with higher wood density, and thereby increases the aboveground biomass in central African forests by up to 60 t ha–1, according to simulations with the Ecosystem Demography model.

    • Fabio Berzaghi
    • , Marcos Longo
    •  & Christopher E. Doughty

  • Article |

    Fires and logging alter soil composition and result in a significant reduction of soil nutrients that lasts for decades after the disturbance, suggests an analysis of soil samples across a multi-century sequence in mountain ash forests.

    • Elle J. Bowd
    • , Sam C. Banks
    •  & David B. Lindenmayer

  • News & Views |

    Mangrove canopy heights vary around the world in response to rain, storms and human activities, suggests a global analysis of mangrove canopy height. How tall the trees are matters for estimating global mangrove carbon storage.

    • Daniel A. Friess

  • News & Views |

    Tall trees are more resilient to drought than short trees, suggests a comparison of the sensitivity of photosynthesis to soil moisture in Amazon forests.

    • Paulo Brando

  • Article |

    Tall trees are less sensitive to variation in precipitation than short trees, according to analyses of photosynthetic sensitivity to drought in tall and short Amazon forests. The results demonstrate higher resilience of tall trees to drought.

    • Francesco Giardina
    • , Alexandra G. Konings
    •  & Pierre Gentine

  • News & Views |

    Soil carbon stocks depend on inputs from decomposing vegetation and return to the atmosphere as CO2. Monitoring of carbon stocks in German alpine soils has shown large losses linked to climate change and a possible positive feedback loop.

    • Guy Kirk

  • News & Views |

    Leases of land concessions in Cambodia have accelerated in the last ten years. An analysis using high-resolution maps and official documents shows that deforestation rates in the land concessions are higher than in other areas.

    • Tom Rudel

  • Editorial |

    Complex ecological and evolutionary controls of forest dynamics make projecting the future difficult.

  • Letter |

    Forests may be vulnerable to future droughts. A tree mortality threshold based on plant hydraulics suggests that increased drought may trigger widespread dieback in the southwestern United States by mid-century.

    • William R. L. Anderegg
    • , Alan Flint
    •  & Christopher B. Field

  • News & Views |

    Boreal forest fires tend to be more intense and lethal in North America than Eurasia. Differences in tree species composition explain these differences in fire regime, and lead to contrasting feedbacks to climate.

    • Mike Flannigan

  • News & Views |

    Carbon dioxide can stimulate photosynthesis in trees and increase their growth rates. A study of tree rings from three seasonal tropical forests shows no evidence of faster growth during 150 years of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

    • Lucas A. Cernusak

  • Letter |

    Assessing potential future carbon loss from tropical forests is important for evaluating the efficacy of programmes for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). An exploration of results from 22 climate models in conjunction with a land surface scheme suggests that in the Americas, Africa and Asia, the resilience of tropical forests to climate change is higher than expected, although uncertainties are large.

    • Chris Huntingford
    • , Przemyslaw Zelazowski
    •  & Peter M. Cox

  • Letter |

    Increased temperatures and declines in water availability have influenced the productivity of mountain forests over the past half century. An analysis of 25 years of observational and satellite data suggests that mid-elevation forest greenness is strongly regulated by snow accumulation.

    • Ernesto Trujillo
    • , Noah P. Molotch
    •  & Roger C. Bales

  • Letter |

    Before it was destroyed by slash and burn practices, Brazil’s Atlantic Forest was one of the largest tropical forest biomes on Earth. Measurements from a river draining the region suggest that significant quantities of black carbon generated by the burning continue to be exported from the former forest.

    • Thorsten Dittmar
    • , Carlos Eduardo de Rezende
    •  & Marcelo Correa Bernardes

  • Editorial |

    The preservation of forests, both on land and in mangrove swamps, has received much attention in the move to protect biological carbon stores. Less conspicuous communities of organisms deserve some scrutiny, too.

  • Letter |

    Humid montane tropical forests are often thought to contain low levels of bioavailable nitrogen. An analysis of the concentration and isotopic signature of nitrate in tropical montane forest streams suggests that these ecosystems may be rich in nitrogen.

    • E. N. Jack Brookshire
    • , Lars O. Hedin
    •  & John K. Jackson

  • News & Views |

    Empirical data on mangrove carbon pools and fluxes are scarce. A field survey in the Indo-Pacific region suggests that the sediments below these remarkable trees hold exceptionally high quantities of carbon.

    • Steven Bouillon

  • Letter |

    The areal extent of mangrove forests has declined by 30–50% over the past half century. An analysis of mangrove forests across the Indo-Pacific suggests that mangrove deforestation generates losses of 0.02–0.12 Pg C yr−1, equivalent to up to 10% of carbon emissions from global deforestation.

    • Daniel C. Donato
    • , J. Boone Kauffman
    •  & Markku Kanninen

  • Letter |

    Methane concentrations above tropical forests in the neotropics are high, according to space-borne observations. Flux measurements in the field suggest that tank bromeliads, herbaceous plants common throughout tropical forests, emit methane and may contribute to the tropical source.

    • Guntars O. Martinson
    • , Florian A. Werner
    •  & Edzo Veldkamp

  • Article |

    European heatwaves have raised interest in the impact of land-cover conditions on temperature extremes. Analyses of observations from an extensive network of flux towers in Europe reveal a difference in the response of forests and grassland to extreme or long-lasting heat.

    • Adriaan J. Teuling
    • , Sonia I. Seneviratne
    •  & Georg Wohlfahrt

  • Review Article |

    The use of fossil fuels and fertilizers has increased the amount of biologically reactive nitrogen in the atmosphere over the past century. A meta-analysis suggests that nitrogen deposition typically impedes the decomposition of carbon in forest soils, significantly reducing carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere.

    • I. A. Janssens
    • , W. Dieleman
    •  & B.E. Law

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