Life stage, not climate change, explains observed tree range shifts.

ABSTRACT: Ongoing climate change is expected to shift tree species distribution and therefore affect forest biodiversity and ecosystem services. To assess and project tree distributional shifts, researchers may compare the distribution of juvenile and adult trees under the assumption that differences between tree life stages reflect distributional shifts triggered by climate change. However, the distribution of tree life stages could differ within the lifespan of trees, therefore, we hypothesize that currently observed distributional differences could represent shifts over ontogeny as opposed to climatically driven changes. Here, we test this hypothesis with data from 1435 plots resurveyed after more than three decades across the Western Carpathians. We compared seedling, sapling and adult distribut

SUBMITTER: Malis F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5424071 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature