Herbivory and plant growth rate determine the success of El Niño Southern Oscillation‐driven tree establishment in semiarid South America
By M. Holmgren, B. López, J. Gutiérrez, F. Squeo. 2006
107 citations recorded by the source corpus.
While climatic extremes are predicted to increase with global warming, we know little about the effect of climatic variability on biome distribution. Here, we show that rainy El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events can enhance tree recruitment in the arid and semiarid ecosystems of north‐central Chile and northwest Peru. Tree‐ring studies in natural populations revealed that rainy El Niño episodes have triggered forest regeneration in Peru. Field experiments indicate that tree seedling recruitment in Chile is much less successful than in Peru due mostly to larger mortality caused by herbivores. The dramatic impact of herbivores in Chile was derived from the combined result of slower plant growth and the presence of exotic herbivores (European rabbits and hares). The interplay of herbivory and climatic effects we demonstrated implies that rainy ENSO events may represent ‘windows of opportunity’ for forest recovery if herbivore pressure is minimized at the right moment.
Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7c8113f96aa3a0d8a0023a970b483e473bfa436e
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In Atmospheric Science
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Citations in the corpus
- Advances in restoration ecology: rising to the challenges of the coming decades (2015, background): “The vagaries of climate often influence recruitment and better predictions of climatic oscillations (e.g., El Nino phases) may aid restoration planning to improve plant establishment success in combination with these technological advancements (Holmgren et al. 2006).”