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Forests are multifaceted ecosystems that perform an array of essential functions that both directly and indirectly impact humanity. They act as a nexus of the Earth system’s climate, hydrology and biogeochemical cycles. This function is all the more relevant in the Anthropocene, an epoch characterised by humanity’s impact on our planet, given the vast amounts of carbon locked up in tree biomass that help buffer against anthropogenic carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Forests are also hubs of biodiversity that provide essential resources and services to communities, but they are vulnerable to degradation and deforestation. The study of forests, which also includes their restoration, conservation and sustainable use, thus encompasses a broad suite of scientific disciplines, and research in this field is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary.
This collection has been curated by the Earth science and Ecology editorial teams at Nature Communications in the hope that it will provide a helpful resource for researchers and decision makers in this increasingly interdisciplinary field. The collection is divided into four themes: climate-forest feedbacks, the forest-human interface, the forest carbon sink, and communities and ecosystems. This collection will be updated with new research and opinion pieces on a regular basis.
The editorial accompanying this collection discusses our evolving history with forests and how science can guide us towards living sustainably with these key ecosystems.
Different aspects of biodiversity may not necessarily converge in their response to climate change. Here, the authors investigate 25-year shifts in taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic diversity of tropical forests along a spatial climate gradient in West Africa, showing that drier forests are less stable than wetter forests.
The Janzen-Connell hypothesis posits that seedlings may be less likely to establish near conspecifics due to shared natural enemies. Here, Jia et al. show that tree species traits determine whether fungal pathogens or insect herbivores inhibit seedling recruitment and survival in a temperate forest.
Tree diversity decreases at the edges of fragmented forests. Here, Krishnadas et al. find that weaker top-down regulation by insects and fungal pathogens during seedling recruitment contributes to reduced tree seedling diversity near forest edges in a human-modified landscape.
Satellite-borne radar systems are promising tools to obtain spatial habitat data with complete geographic coverage. Here the authors show that freely available Sentinel-1 radar data perform as well as standard airborne laser scanning data for mapping biodiversity of 12 taxa across temperate forests in Germany.
Increases in tree mortality can signal changes in forest health, but large-scale tree mortality is difficult to quantify. Here Senf et al. show large-scale increases in forest mortality in Central Europe over the past 30 years, which were related to increasing growing stocks and temperature.
Associations with mycorrhizal fungi can affect the outcome of plant competition in complex ways. Here the authors use a decade-long field survey and two hyphal exclusion experiments to reveal a critical role of underground fungal networks in facilitating seedling growth and fitness of ectomycorrhizal plants but not arbuscular mycorrhizal plants.
Given the potential for increasingly common and intense tropical storms, it is important to understand their effects on island forest communities. Here, the authors show that Hurricane María’s strength and rainfall had larger effects on tree mortality than other less severe storms, and that large trees and species with low-density wood were most susceptible.
Resilience to drought is crucial for tree survival under climate change. Here, DeSoto et al. show that trees that died during drought were less resilient to previous dry events compared to surviving conspecifics, but the resilience strategies differ between angiosperms and gymnosperms.
Though biodiversity is expected to be important in productivity in tree communities, there is little empirical evidence of this at local scales. Here, Fichtner et al. show that higher neighbourhood species richness increased tree growth, explaining over half of the variation in community productivity.
Here, Schuldt et al. collate data from two long-term grassland and forest biodiversity experiments to ask how plant diversity facets affect the diversity of higher trophic levels. The results show that positive effects of plant diversity on consumer diversity are mediated by plant structural and functional diversity, and vary across ecosystems and trophic levels.
Tree mortality has been shown to be the dominant control on carbon storage in Amazon forests, but little is known of how and why Amazon forest trees die. Here the authors analyse a large Amazon-wide dataset, finding that fast-growing species face greater mortality risk, but that slower-growing individuals within a species are more likely to die, regardless of size.
Biodiversity change can impact ecosystem functioning, though this is primarily studied at lower trophic levels. Here, Schuldt et al. find that biodiversity components other than tree species richness are particularly important, and higher trophic level diversity plays a role in multifunctionality.
As remote sensing technology improves, it is now possible to map fine-scale variation in plant functional traits. Schneider et al. remotely sense tree functional diversity, validate with field data, and reveal patterns of plant adaptation to the environment previously not retrievable from plot data
Earth system model simulations of future climate in the Amazon show little agreement. Here, the authors show that biases in internally generated climate explain most of this uncertainty and that the balance between water-saturated and water-limited evapotranspiration controls the Amazon resilience to climate change.
Deforestation and edge effects around cleared areas impact forest stability. Here, the authors examine human impacts on Amazonian forest-savanna bistability and show that tree cover bimodality is enhanced in regions close to human activities and is nearly absent in regions unaffected by human activities.
Dust is an important nutrient source to landscapes, but often the source of dust is poorly constrained. Here, the authors quantify the origin of different dust sources in the Sierra Nevada by analysing dust composition and suggest exogenic dust may drive nutrient budgets in montane ecosystems.
Invasive brown treesnakes decimated the forest bird community on the island of Guam. Now, Rogers and colleagues document the indirect effects of the snake on trees, linking snake-initiated bird loss to reduced seed dispersal and plant recruitment on Guam compared to nearby uninvaded islands.
Land use becomes more diverse when it considers uncertain interactions of multiple ecosystem services. Here, Knoke and colleagues show that uncertainty plays a larger role if ecosystem services are optimized only for a single service, or if services correlate.
How biodiversity is linked to multiple ecosystem functions is not fully understood. Here, the authors show that a new mechanism, which they term the 'jack-of-all-trades' effect, best explains patterns of tree diversity and ecosystem multifunctionality in European forests.