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Global field observations of tree die-off reveal hotter-drought fingerprint for Earth's forests.

ABSTRACT: Earth's forests face grave challenges in the Anthropocene, including hotter droughts increasingly associated with widespread forest die-off events. But despite the vital importance of forests to global ecosystem services, their fates in a warming world remain highly uncertain. Lacking is quantitative determination of commonality in climate anomalies associated with pulses of tree mortality-from published, field-documented mortality events-required for understanding the role of extreme climate events in overall global tree die-off patterns. Here we established a geo-referenced global database documenting climate-induced mortality events spanning all tree-supporting biomes and continents, from 154 peer-reviewed studies since 1970. Our analysis quantifies a global "hotter-drought fingerprint" from these tree-mortality sites-effectively a hotter and drier climate signal for tree mortality-across 675 locations encompassing 1,303 plots. Frequency of these observed mortality-year climate conditions strongly increases nonlinearly under projected warming. Our database also provides initial footing for further community-developed, quantitative, ground-based monitoring of global tree mortality.

SUBMITTER: Hammond WM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8983702 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Global field observations of tree die-off reveal hotter-drought fingerprint for Earth's forests.

Hammond William M WM Williams A Park AP Abatzoglou John T JT Adams Henry D HD Klein Tamir T López Rosana R Sáenz-Romero Cuauhtémoc C Hartmann Henrik H Breshears David D DD Allen Craig D CD

Nature communications 20220405 1

Earth's forests face grave challenges in the Anthropocene, including hotter droughts increasingly associated with widespread forest die-off events. But despite the vital importance of forests to global ecosystem services, their fates in a warming world remain highly uncertain. Lacking is quantitative determination of commonality in climate anomalies associated with pulses of tree mortality-from published, field-documented mortality events-required for understanding the role of extreme climate ev ...[more]

PMID: 35383157

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Dataset Information

Global field observations of tree die-off reveal hotter-drought fingerprint for Earth's forests.

Publications

Global field observations of tree die-off reveal hotter-drought fingerprint for Earth's forests.

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