Forest ecology articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article
    | Open Access

    An analysis of tree survival data from forest sites worldwide shows that in the tropics, rare tree species experience stronger stabilizing density dependence than common species, wheras no correlation of stabilizing density dependence and abundance exists in the temperate zone.

    • Lisa Hülsmann
    • , Ryan A. Chisholm
    •  & Florian Hartig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inventory data from more than 1 million trees across African, Amazonian and Southeast Asian tropical forests suggests that, despite their high diversity, just 1,053 species, representing a consistent ~2.2% of tropical tree species in each region, constitute half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees.

    • Declan L. M. Cooper
    • , Simon L. Lewis
    •  & Stanford Zent

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Analysis of ground-sourced and satellite-derived models reveals a global forest carbon potential of 226 Gt outside agricultural and urban lands, with a difference of only 12% across these modelling approaches.

    • Lidong Mo
    • , Constantin M. Zohner
    •  & Thomas W. Crowther

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

    • Camille S. Delavaux
    • , Thomas W. Crowther
    •  & Daniel S. Maynard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Logged forests in Borneo have higher energy flow from vegetation to and broad range of bird and mammal species relative to old-growth forests and oil palm plantations, showing that they can be diverse and ecologically vibrant ecosystems.

    • Yadvinder Malhi
    • , Terhi Riutta
    •  & Matthew J. Struebig

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A boreal conifer is advancing northwards into Arctic tundra, with this treeline advance facilitated by climate warming together with winter winds, deeper snow and increased soil nutrient availability.

    • Roman J. Dial
    • , Colin T. Maher
    •  & Patrick F. Sullivan

  • Article |

    Woody plants across the continental United States make extensive use of water stored in bedrock across diverse climates and biomes.

    • Erica L. McCormick
    • , David N. Dralle
    •  & Daniella M. Rempe

  • Article |

    The aboveground carbon stock of a montane African forest network is comparable to that of a lowland African forest network and two-thirds higher than default values for these montane forests.

    • Aida Cuni-Sanchez
    • , Martin J. P. Sullivan
    •  & Etienne Zibera

  • Article |

    When tropical forest soils are warmed in situ, they release more CO2 than predicted by theory, creating a potentially substantial positive feedback to climate change.

    • Andrew T. Nottingham
    • , Patrick Meir
    •  & Benjamin L. Turner

  • Article |

    Carbon dioxide enrichment of a mature forest resulted in the emission of the excess carbon back into the atmosphere via enhanced ecosystem respiration, suggesting that mature forests may be limited in their capacity to mitigate climate change.

    • Mingkai Jiang
    • , Belinda E. Medlyn
    •  & David S. Ellsworth

  • Letter |

    Soil radiocarbon dating reveals that combusted ‘legacy carbon’—soil carbon that escaped burning during previous fires—could shift the carbon balance of boreal ecosystems, resulting in a positive climate feedback.

    • Xanthe J. Walker
    • , Jennifer L. Baltzer
    •  & Michelle C. Mack

  • Article |

    Analyses of data from 137 forest plots across 20 European countries show that ectomycorrhizal fungal diversity is strongly influenced by environmental and host species factors and provide thresholds to inform ecosystem assessment tools

    • Sietse van der Linde
    • , Laura M. Suz
    •  & Martin I. Bidartondo

  • Letter |

    Satellite data and modelling reveal that tropical forest fragments have similar size distributions across continents, and that forest fragmentation is close to a critical point, beyond which fragment numbers will strongly increase.

    • Franziska Taubert
    • , Rico Fischer
    •  & Andreas Huth

  • Article |

    Fragmentation of forest ecosystems produces forest edges, which affect the distribution of many analysed vertebrate species; smaller-bodied amphibians, larger reptiles and medium-sized mammals experience a larger reduction in suitable habitat than other forest-core species.

    • M. Pfeifer
    • , V. Lefebvre
    •  & R. M. Ewers

  • Letter |

    Field measurements combined with remotely sensed data reveal the Cuvette Centrale in the central Congo Basin to contain the most extensive peatland complex in the tropics, increasing the best estimate of global tropical peatland carbon stocks by approximately one-third.

    • Greta C. Dargie
    • , Simon L. Lewis
    •  & Suspense A. Ifo

  • Letter |

    Climate models require an understanding of ecosystem-scale respiration and photosynthesis, yet there is no way of measuring these two fluxes directly; here, new instrumentation is used to determine these fluxes in a temperate forest, showing, for instance, that respiration is less during the day than at night.

    • R. Wehr
    • , J. W. Munger
    •  & S. R. Saleska

  • Letter |

    An analysis of above-ground biomass recovery during secondary succession in forest sites and plots, covering the major environmental gradients in the Neotropics.

    • Lourens Poorter
    • , Frans Bongers
    •  & Danaë M. A. Rozendaal

  • Letter |

    Data from millions of trees in thousands of locations are used to show that certain key traits affect competitive ability in predictable ways, and that there are trade-offs between traits that favour growth with and without competition.

    • Georges Kunstler
    • , Daniel Falster
    •  & Mark Westoby

  • Article |

    Ground-sourced tree density data is assembled to provide a global map of tree density, which reveals that there are three trillion trees (tenfold more than previous estimates); tree numbers have declined by nearly half since the start of human civilization and over 15 billion trees are lost on an annual basis.

    • T. W. Crowther
    • , H. B. Glick
    •  & M. A. Bradford

  • Letter |

    The capacity of Amazonian forests to sequester carbon has weakened with potentially important implications for climate change.

    • R. J. W. Brienen
    • , O. L. Phillips
    •  & R. J. Zagt

  • Letter |

    Suppressing fungi in a tropical forest plant community lowers diversity by reducing the negative effects of density on seedling recruitment, and removing insects increases seedling survival and alters plant community composition; this demonstrates the crucial role of pathogens and insects in maintaining and structuring tropical forest plant diversity.

    • Robert Bagchi
    • , Rachel E. Gallery
    •  & Owen T. Lewis

  • Letter |

    A global analysis shows that for most tree species the largest trees are the fastest-growing trees, a finding that resolves conflicting assumptions about tree growth and that has implications for understanding forest carbon dynamics, resource allocation trade-offs within trees and plant senescence.

    • N. L. Stephenson
    • , A. J. Das
    •  & M. A. Zavala

  • News & Views |

    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

    • Bettina M. J. Engelbrecht

  • Letter |

    Analysis of data from forest plants worldwide shows that margins between threshold xylem pressures at which plants suffer damage and the lowest xylem pressures experienced are small, with no difference between dry and wet forests, providing insight into why drought-induced forest decline is occurring in both arid and wet forests.

    • Brendan Choat
    • , Steven Jansen
    •  & Amy E. Zanne

  • News Feature |

    Forests in the American west are under attack from giant fires, climate change and insect outbreaks. Some ecosystems will never be the same.

    • Michelle Nijhuis

  • News & Views |

    Past research implied that positive feedback might exist between climate change and greenhouse-gas emissions from soil. A study finds that drought-induced declines in such emissions from tropical forests could counter climate change.

    • Cory C. Cleveland
    •  & Benjamin W. Sullivan

  • Letter |

    Analysis of changes in functional groups of species and potential drivers of environmental change for protected areas across the world’s major tropical regions reveals large variation between reserves that have been effective and those experiencing an erosion of biodiversity, and shows that environmental changes immediately outside reserves are nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate.

    • William F. Laurance
    • , D. Carolina Useche
    •  & Franky Zamzani

Browse broader subjects

Browse Forest ecology across other nature.com journals