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Plant ecology

Forests on the brink

Nature volume 491, pages 675–676 (2012)Cite this article

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An analysis of the physiological vulnerability of different trees to drought shows that forests around the globe are at equally high risk of succumbing to increases in drought conditions. See Letter p.752

Water is the most limiting factor for ecosystem diversity and productivity worldwide. But the global climate is changing, and both warming and shifts in rainfall patterns are projected, which will leave large areas of the planet with less rain and a higher likelihood of extreme drought events1,2. These changes will almost certainly affect forests, which cover more than 30% of the world's land surface. Understanding these effects is imperative: forests play an integral part in carbon and water cycles, they provide timber and other products, and they are home to a vast diversity of plants, animals and microorganisms. But forests occur in a wide range of climatic conditions, so it is a challenge to predict how the vulnerability of trees to changes in water availability compares between different biomes. In this issue, Choat et al.3 (page 752) use a combination of physiological measurements of the vulnerability of trees to drought and of the drought stress they actually experience in their natural habitats to show that forests worldwide are at high riskFootnote 1.

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Figure 1: Thirsty trees.

B. WERMELINGER, WSL

Notes

  1. *This article and the paper under discussion3 were published online on 21 November 2012.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Ecology, Bettina M. J. Engelbrecht is at the Bayreuth Center of Ecology and Environmental Science, University of Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany, and at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama.,

    Bettina M. J. Engelbrecht

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  1. Bettina M. J. Engelbrecht
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Correspondence to Bettina M. J. Engelbrecht.

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Engelbrecht, B. Forests on the brink. Nature 491, 675–676 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11756

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